IBS 


AUTOMOBILE 
BIOGRAPHIES 


AN  ACCOUNT  OF  THE  LIVES  AND  THE 
WORK  OF  THOSE  WHO  HAVE  BEEN 
IDENTIFIED  WITH  THE  INVENTION  AND 
DEVELOPMENT  OF  SELF-PROPELLED 
VEHICLES  ON  THE  COMMON  ROADS 


ILLUSTRATED 


NEW  YORK 

THE    MONOGRAPH    PRESS 


Copyright,   1904 

BY  THE  MONOGRAPH   PRESS 

All  Rights  Reserved 


u) 


FOREWORD 


FOREWORD 


N  a  large  sense  the  history  of  the  rise  of  the  auto- 
mobile has  been  a  history  of  some  of  the  foremost 
inventors,  mechanical  engineers,  manufacturers 
and  active  business  men  of  more  than  a  full  cen- 
tury. The  subject  of  self-propelled  vehicles  on  the  com- 
mon roads  has  enlisted  the  faculties  of  many  men  whose 
minds  have  been  engrossed  with  the  study  and  the  solu- 
tion of  mechanical  and  engineering  problems,  purely  from 
an  absorbing  love  of  science ;  it  has  had  the  financial  sup- 
port of  those  whose  energies  are  constantly  and  forcefully 
exerted  in  the  industrial  and  commercial  activities  of  the 
age;  it  has  received  the  merited  consideration  of  those  who 
regard  as  of  paramount  importance  any  addition  to  the 
sum  of  successful  human  endeavor  and  any  influence  that 
contributes  to  the  further  advance  of  modern  civilization. 
Along  these  lines  of  thought  this  book  of  AUTOMOBILE 
BIOGRAPHIES  has  been  prepared.  On  its  pages  are 
sketches  of  the  lives  and  the  work  of  those  who  have  been 
most  active  in  planning,  inventing  and  perfecting  the  mod- 
ern horseless  highway  vehicle,  in  adapting  it  to  the  public 
needs  for  pleasure  or  business  and  in  promoting  its  use- 
fulness and  broadening  the  field  of  its  utility. 

Included  herein  are  accounts  of  the  pioneer  inventors, 
the  noted  investigators  and  the  contemporaneous  workers 
who  have  helped  to  make  the  automobile  in  its  many  forms 
the  most  remarkable  mechanical  success  of  to-day  and  the 

5 


M119809 


FOREWORD 

most  valuable  and  epoch-making  addition  to  the  conveni- 
ences of  modern  social,  industrial  and  commercial  life. 
These  sketches  have  been  carefully  prepared  from  the  best 
sources  of  information,  works  of  reference,  personal  pa- 
pers and  so  on?  and  are  believed  to  be  thoroughly  accurate 
and  reliable.  Much  of  the  information  contained  in  them 
has  been  derived  from  exceedingly  rare  old  volumes  and 
papers  that  are  not  generally  accessible,  and  it  comes  with 
a  full  flavor  of  newness.  Much  also  has  been  acquired 
from  original  sources  and  has  never  before  been  given  to 
the  public. 

The  investigator  into  this  subject  will  find,  doubtless, 
to  his  very  great  surprise,  that  the  story  of  the  pioneer 
inventors,  who,  in  the  early  part  of  the  nineteenth  cen- 
tury, experimented  with  the  problems  of  the  steam  road 
carriage,  has  been  recorded  voluminously  and  with  much 
detail.  It  was  a  notable  movement,  that  absorbed  the 
abundant  attention  of  inventors,  manufacturers  and  the 
public  at  large  at  that  time. 

Writers  of  that  day  recorded  with  a  great  deal  of 
particularity  the  experimenting  with  boilers,  engines,  ma- 
chinery and  carriages,  and  the  promoting  of  companies  for 
the  transportation  of  passengers  and  the  hauling  of  goods. 
Modern  students  and  historians  of  this  subject  find 
themselves  greatly  indebted  to  the  writers  of  that  epoch, 
like  Gordon,  Herbert  and  others,  who  preserved,  with 
such  painstaking  care,  for  future  generations,  as  well  as 
for  their  own  time,  the  account  of  the  lives  and  labors  of 
such  men  as  Watt,  Trevithick,  Maceroni,  Hancock  and 
others.  Every  modern  work  upon  this  subject  draws  gen- 
erously from  those  sources. 

Concerning  the  later  period  from  the  middle  of  the 
century  that  has  just  ended,  down  to  the  present  time, 

6 


FOREWORD 

there  is  less  concrete  information,  readily  available.  With 
the  cessation  of  public  interest  in  the  matter  and  its  gen- 
eral relegation  into  the  background,  by  inventors,  engi- 
neers and  those  who  had  previously  been  financial  backers 
of  the  experimenting,  writers  ceased  to  give  the  subject 
the  enthusiastic  attention  that  they  had  before  bestowed 
upon  it.  Records  of  that  period  are  scant,  partly  because 
there  was  so  little  to  record  and  partly  because  no  one 
cared  to  record  even  that  little. 

Until  comparatively  recent  times  the  historian  of  the 
self-propelled  vehicle,  who  was  so  much  in  evidence  sev- 
enty-five years  ago,  had  not  reappeared.  Even  now  his 
work  is  generally  of  a  desultory  character,  voluminous, 
but  largely  ephemeral.  It  is  widely  scattered,  not  easily 
accessible  and  already  considerably  forgotten  from  day  to 
day.  Especially  of  the  men  of  the  last  half  century,  who 
have  made  the  present-day  automobile  possible  and  are 
now  contributing  to  its  greater  future,  the  following  pages 
present  much  that  has  never  been  brought  together  in  this 
form.  It  is  both  history  and  the  material  for  history. 

It  is  believed  that  these  sketches  will  be  found  pecu- 
liarly interesting  and  permanently  valuable.  Individually 
they  are  clear  presentations  of  the  achievements  of  some 
of  the  most  distinguished  engineers  and  inventors  of  the 
last  hundred  years.  Collectively  they  present  a  complete 
story  of  the  inception  and  gradual  development  of  the 
automobile  from  the  first  clumsy  steam  wagons  of  Cugnot, 
Trevithick,  Evans  and  others  to  the  perfected  carriage  of 
to-day. 

The  chapter  on  The  Origin  and  Development  of  the 
Automobile  is  a  careful  study  and  review  of  the  conditions 
that  attended  the  attempts  to  install  the  first  common  road 
steam  carriages,  the  tentative  experimenting  with  bicycles, 

7 


FOREWORD 

tricycles  and  other  vehicles  in  the  middle  of  the  last  cen- 
tury and  the  renaissance  of  the  last  two  decades.  Several 
of  the  illustrations  are  from  old  and  rare  prints,  and  others 
are  from  photographs. 

It  is  not  possible  to  set  down  here  all  the  authorities 
that  have  been  consulted  in  the  preparation  of  this  work. 
Special  acknowledgment,  however,  must  be  made  to  The 
Engineering  Magazine  for  permission  to  use  text  and 
photographs,  and  to  J.  G.  Pangborn  for  permission  to 
use  a  great  deal  of  interesting  information  regarding  the 
early  steam  inventors  contained  in  his  work,  The  World's 
Railway,  and  to  reproduce  portrait  sketches  of  Trevithick, 
Murdoch,  and  Read,  from  the  same  valuable  volume. 

LYMAN  HORACE  WEEKS. 

NEW  YORK,  January,  1905. 


8 


ORIGIN  AND    DEVELOPMENT    OF 
THE  AUTOMOBILE 


ORIGIN  AND  DEVELOPMENT  OF  THE 
AUTOMOBILE 


STRANGE  EARLY  VEHICLES 

He  who  would  fully  acquaint  himself  with  the  his- 
tory of  the  inception  and  growth  of  the  idea  of  travel 
by  self-propelled  vehicles  on  the  public  highways 
must  go  further  back  in  the  annals  of  the  past  than 
he  is  likely  first  to  anticipate.  Nearly  three  cen- 
turies ago  men  of  mechanical  and  scientific  turns  of 
mind  were  giving  attention  to  the  subject,  although 
their  thoughts  at  that  time  were  mostly  confined  to 
the  realms  of  imaginative  speculation.  Even  before 
that  philosophers  occasionally  dreamed  of  what 
might  be  in  some  far  off  time.  Roger  Bacon,  in  the 
thirteenth  century,  looking  into  the  distant  future, 
made  this  prediction:  "It  will  be  possible  to  con- 
struct chariots  so  that  without  animals  they  may  be 
moved  with  incalculable  speed."  It  was  several  hun- 
dred years  before  men  were  ready  to  give  practical 
attention  to  this  idea,  and  about  1740  good  Bishop 
Berkeley  could  only  make  this  as  a  prediction  and 
not  a  realization :  "Mark  me,  ere  long  we  shall  see 
a  pan  of  coals  brought  to  use  in  place  of  a  feed  of 
oats." 

But  the  ancients,  in  a  way,  anticipated  even  Roger 
Bacon  and  Bishop  Berkeley,  for  Heliodorus  refers  to 
a  triumphal  chariot  at  Athens  that  was  moved  by 
slaves  who  worked  the  machinery,  and  Pancirollus 
also  alludes  to  such  chariots, 
ii 


AUTOMOBILE  BIOGRAPHIES 

HORSELESS  WAGONS  IN  CHINA 

Approaching  the  seventeenth  century  the  investi- 
gator finds  that  definite  examples  are  becoming  more 
numerous,  even  if  as  yet  not  very  practical.  China, 
which,  like  Egypt,  seems  to  have  known  and  buried 
many  ideas  centuries  before  the  rest  of  the  world 
achieved  them,  had  horseless  vehicles  before  1600. 
These  merit,  at  least,  passing  attention  even  though 
they  were  not  propelled  by  an  engine,  for  the  present 
automobile  is  the  outgrowth  of  that  old  idea  to 
eliminate  the  horse  as  the  means  of  travel. 

Matthieu  Ricci,  1552-1610,  a  Jesuit  missionary  in 
China,  told  how  in  that  country  a  wagon  not  drawn 
by  horses  or  other  animals  was  in  common  use.  In 
an  early  collection  of  travels  this  vehicle  was  de- 
scribed as  follows :  "This  river  is  so  cloyed  with 
ships  because  it  is  not  frozen  in  winter  that  the  way 
is  stopped  with  multitude;  which  made  Ricius  ex- 
change his  way  by  water  into  another  (more  strange 
to  us)  by  waggon,  if  we  may  so  call  it,  which  had 
but  one  wheel,  so  built  that  one  might  sit  in  the  mid- 
dle as  'twere  on  horseback,  and  on  each  side  another, 
the  waggoner  putting  't  swiftly  and  safely  forwards 
with  levers  or  barres  of  wood  (those  waggons  driven 
by  wind  and  gayle  he  mentions  not. )  "  It  was  some- 
what later  than  this  that  China  was  indebted  to  that 
other  famous  Jesuit  missionary,  Verbiest,  for  his 
steam  carriage,  which,  however,  was  not  much  more 
than  a  toy. 

MANUALLY  PROPELLED  VEHICLES 

But   in   the   seventeenth   century   most   attention 
seems  to  have  been  given  to  devising  carriages  that 
12 


ORIGIN   AND  DEVELOPMENT 

should  be  moved  by  the  hand  or  foot  power  of  man. 
The  auto  car  that  was  run  in  the  streets  of  Nurem- 
berg. Germany,  by  Johann  Hautsch,  in  1649,  was 
of  this  description,  and  that  of  Elie  Richard,  the  phy- 
sician, of  La  Rochelle,  France,  about  the  same  time, 
was  of  the  same  class. 

Not  long  after  this  Potter,  of  England,  came  along 
in  1663  with  a  mechanical  cart  designed  to  travel  on 
legs,  and  in  the  same  year  the  celebrated  Hooke  pre- 
sented to  the  Royal  Society  of  England  a  plan  for 
some  sort  of  a  machine  by  which  one  could  "walk 
upon  the  land  or  water  with  swiftness,  after  the 
manner  of  a  crane."  It  does  not  quite  appear  what 
that  cart  and  that  machine  were.  One  authority 
thinks  that  the  Hooke  patent  was  for  a  one-wheel 
vehicle  supposed  to  be  propelled  by  a  person  inside 
the  wheel.  Then,  also,  there  was  Beza,  another 
French  physician,  with  a  mechanical  vehicle  in  1710. 

OTHER  FRENCH  AND  ENGLISH  EXPERIMENTS 

In  fact,  the  interest  in  carriages  worked  by  man 
power  extended  from  the  seventeenth  well  into  the 
nineteenth  century.  Soon  after  the  time  of  Beza, 
mechanical  chariots,  modeled  after  the  Richard 
coach,  were  advertised  to  be  run  in  London,  but  it 
does  not  appear  that  they  met  with  public  favor. 
Scientists  and  others  gave  much  thought  to  the  sub- 
ject, both  in  England  and  in  France.  John  Vevers, 
master  of  the  boarding-school  at  Ryegate,  Surrey, 
came  out  with  a  carriage  that  was  evidently  copied 
from  that  of  Richard.  Other  forms  of  carriages 
worked  by  hand  or  foot  power  of  man  were  described 
in  the  periodicals  of  the  time.  George  Black,  of 


AUTOMOBILE   BIOGRAPHIES 

Berwick-on-the-Tweed,  built  a  wagon  to  be  run  by 
hand  power  in  1768.  In  England,  John  Ladd,  of 
Trowbridge,  Wilts,  in  1757;  John  Beaumont,  of 
Ayrshire,  in  1788,  and  in  France,  Thomas  in  1703, 
Gerard  in  1711,  Ferry  in  1770,  and  Maillard,  Blanch- 
ard  and  Meurice,  in  1779,  and  others,  were  most 
active  during  this  period. 

It  was  well  into  the  nineteenth  century  before  this 
idea  was  wholly  abandoned.  Edmund  Cartwright, 
inventor  of  the  hand  loom,  contributed  to  the  experi- 
menting, and  the  1831  patent  to  Sir  James  C.  Ander- 
son was  for  a  very  imposing  vehicle  rowed  by 
twenty-four  men. 

COMPRESSED  AIR  POWER 

At  the  same  time  that  the  steam  engineers  in  Eng- 
land were  bringing  out  their  vehicles,  1800-35,  others 
were  at  work  on  the  problem  of  compressed  air  car- 
riages. Among  these  was  W.  Mann,  of  Brixton, 
who,  in  1830,  published  in  London  a  pamphlet,  en- 
titled A  Description  of  a  New  Method  of  Propelling 
Locomotive  Machines,  and  of  Communicating  Power 
and  Motion  to  All  Other  Kinds  of  Machinery,  and 
it  contained  a  lithograph  of  the  proposed  carriage. 
Sir  George  Medhurst,  of  England,  about  1800,  with 
his  proposed  regular  line  of  coaches  run  by  com- 
pressed air  was,  perhaps,  the  most  conspicuous  ex- 
perimenter into  this  method  of  propulsion. 

SAILING  CARRIAGES  ON  LAND 

Many  men  long  speculated  upon  the  possibility  of 
wind  propulsion  on  land  as  well  as  upon  the  sea. 
The  most  ambitious  attempt  in  that  line  was  the  sail- 
14 


ORIGIN    AND   DEVELOPMENT 

ing  chariot  of  Simon  Stevin,  of  The  Hague,  in  1600. 
Vehicles  of  this  kind  were  built  by  others,  and  in 
1695  Sir  Humphrey  Mackworth  applied  sails  to 
wagons  on  the  tramways  at  his  colliery  at  Neath, 
South  Wales.  The  Frenchman,  Du  Quet,  in  1714, 
and  the  Swiss  clergyman,  Genevois,  proposed  to  get 
power  from  windmills  mounted  on  their  wagons. 
More  curious  even  than  these  was  the  carriage  drawn 
by  kites,  the  invention  of  George  Pocock,  in  1826. 

THE  STEAM  CARRIAGE  PREDICTED 

But  all  these  and  other  fantastic  devices  never  got 
beyond  the  experimental  stage,  and  nothing  of  a  sub- 
stantial, practical  character  was  ever  evolved  from 
them.  It  remained  for  the  latter  part  of  the  eight- 
eenth century  to  see  the  subject  taken  up  seriously 
and  considered  in  a  way  that  promised  definite  re- 
sults. And  it  was  steam  that  then  brought  the  mat- 
ter strongly  to  the  front. 

It  is  true  that  Sir  Isaac  Newton  tentatively  sug- 
gested the  possibility  of  carriage  propulsion  by  steam 
about  1680,  but  his  suggestion  lay  dormant  for  nearly 
a  century.  Then  the  growing  knowledge  of  the 
power  of  steam  and  the  possibilities  in  the  new  ele- 
ment turned  men's  thoughts  again  very  forcibly  to 
this  theme.  The  stationary  engine  had  shown  its 
usefulness,  and  the  consideration  of  making  this  sta- 
tionary machine  movable,  and  therefore  available  for 
transportation,  naturally  followed. 

Dr.  Erasmus  Darwin  is  said  to  have  urged  James 

Watt  and  Matthew  Boulton  to  build  a  fiery  chariot  as 

early  as  1765.     In  his  poem,  The  Botanic  Garden, 

famous  in  that  day,  Dr.  Darwin,  like  a  prophet  crying 

15 


AUTOMOBILE   BIOGRAPHIES 

in  the  wilderness,  sang  of  the  future  of  steam  in  these 
lines : 

"Soon  shall  thy  arm,  unconquered  steam,  afar 
Drag  the  slow  barge,  or  drive  the  rapid  car ; 
On,  on  wide  waving  wings,  expanded  bear 
The  flying  chariot  through  the  field  of  air ; 
Fair  crews  triumphant,  leaning  from  above, 
Shall  wave  their  fluttering  'kerchiefs  as  they  move, 
Or  warrior  bands  alarm  the  gaping  crowds, 
And  armies  shrink  beneath  the  shadowy  clouds." 

These  lines  may  indeed  be  fairly  interpreted  as  an- 
ticipating in  prophetic  prediction  the  modern  motor 
airship,  as  well  as  the  motor  car. 

THE  FIRST  STEAM  VEHICLES 

It  was  considerably  later  than  this  that  the  dream 
of  Dr.  Darwin  approached  to  realization  at  the  hands 
of  the  steam  engine  inventors  and  builders.  Aside 
from  Nicholas  Joseph  Cugnot,  the  French  army  offi- 
cer who,  about  1769,  constructed  an  artillery  wagon 
propelled  by  a  high-pressure  engine,  those  who  first 
built  successful  self-propelled  vehicles  for  highway 
travel  were  the  famous  engineers  of  England  and 
Scotland,  who  harnessed  steam  and  developed  the 
high-pressure  engine  in  the  last  half  of  the  eighteenth 
century  and  the  first  half  of  the  nineteenth.  James 
Watt  patented,  in  1782,  a  double-acting  engine, 
which  he  planned  might  be  "applied  to  give  motion 
to  wheel  carriages,"  the  engine  to  be  portable;  but 
he  never  put  the  patent  to  trial.  He  was  followed 
by  George  Stephenson,  Richard  Trevi thick,  Walter 
Hancock,  Goldsworthy  Gurney,  David  Gordon,  Wil- 
liam Brunton  and  others  in  England,  and  Oliver 
16 


ORIGIN   AND  DEVELOPMENT 

Evans,  Nathan  Read  and  Thomas  Blanchard  in  the 
United  States,  with  two  score  or  more  contempo- 
raries. For  more  than  half  a  century  steam  vehicles 
of  various  types  were  invented  by  these  engineers 
and  many  of  them  were  brought  into  practical  use. 

Soon  after  the  end  of  the  first  quarter  of  the  nine- 
teenth century  the  interest  in  steam  carriages  had 
assumed  large  proportions  in  England.  In  1833 
there  were  no  less  than  twenty  such  vehicles,  either 
completed  or  in  hand,  around  London,  and  a  dozen 
corporations  had  been  organized  to  build  and  run 
them  over  stated  routes. 

Alexander  Gordon,  the  eminent  engineer,  wrote  a 
book,  entitled  Treatise  Upon  Elemental  Locomotion, 
that  went  into  three  editions  inside  of  four  years. 
He  also  brought  out  two  special  journals  covering 
this  field  of  mechanics.  The  Mechanic's  Magazine, 
and  other  publications,  also  gave  much  attention  to 
the  subject,  and  the  steam-carriage  literature  of  the 
period  became  very  voluminous. 

POPULAR  PREJUDICE  AROUSED 

For  a  time  it  looked  as  though  the  new  vehicle  was 
destined  to  a  permanency  and  to  accomplish  a  revolu- 
tion in  the  methods  of  travel  on  the  high-roads.  But 
several  things  arose  to  determine  otherwise.  There 
sprang  up  an  unreasoning  senseless  hostility  to  any 
substitute  for  the  horse  as  the  agent  of  vehicular  traf- 
fic. The  stage-coach  drivers  were  afraid  that  they 
would  be  thrown  out  of  work.  Breeders  of  horses 
foresaw  the  destruction  of  their  business,  when 
horses  should  no  longer  be  in  demand.  Farmers 
were  sure  that  with  horses  superseded  by  steam,  they 
17 


AUTOMOBILE   BIOGRAPHIES 

would  never  be  able  to  sell  any  more  oats.  This 
public  animosity  manifested  itself  wherever  the  steam 
carriages  went.  The  coaches  were  hooted  at  and 
stoned  amid  cries  of  "down  with  machinery."  Stones 
and  other  obstacles  were  placed  in  the  roads,  trenches 
were  dug  to  trap  the  unsuspicious  driver  and  stretches 
of  roadway  were  dug  up  and  made  into  quagmires  to 
stall  the  machines.  Parliament  was  called  upon  and 
enacted  excessive  highway  tolls,  especially  directed  at 
steam  carriages.  Another  law  that  stood  on  the  stat- 
ute books  of  Great  Britain  until  within  comparatively 
recent  times  compelled  every  self-propelled  vehicle 
moving  on  the  highway  to  be  preceded  by  a  man 
walking  and  carrying  a  red  flag. 

THE  BEGINNING  OF  RAILROADS 

All  this  was  undoubtedly  due,  in  a  large  measure, 
if  not  wholly,  to  what  was  then  known  as  the  Turn 
Pike  Trusts,  which,  in  conjunction  with  the  stage-line 
companies,  in  many  cases,  were  owners  of  a  thousand 
and  more  horses.  The  latter,  quite  naturally,  ob- 
jected to  the  introduction  of  the  mechanical  vehicle, 
while  the  former  had  such  relations  to  them  that  both 
their  interests  were  identical. . 

But  above  all  things,  the  great  art  of  railroading 
had  already  grown  from  infant  existence  to  a  condi- 
tion of  great  possibilities,  which  were  now  to  be 
finally  determined  by  a  success,  not  alone  mechanical 
and  in  the  eyes  of  the  inventor,  but  measured  by  the 
balance  sheets  of  the  companies  of  individuals  who 
had  made  possible  the  construction  of  the  various 
experimental  locomotives  or  experimental  lines  then 
being  operated  in  England  and  elsewhere.  Just  at 
18 


ORIGIN   AND  DEVELOPMENT 

this  time,  in  the  thirties  of  the  nineteenth  century, 
seems  to  have  been  the  crucial  point.  The  arguments 
of  the  engineers  on  the  question  of  sufficient  traction 
of  the  iron-shod  wheels  on  iron  or  other  hard  rail- 
ways, while  given  due  consideration,  were  not  wholly 
convincing,  at  least  to  the  people  investing  their 
money  in  the  enterprises;  the  profits  were  to  tell  in 
the  final  conclusion,  and  it  would  seem  that  the  great 
era  of  railroading  might  be  considered  to  have  had 
its  actual  birth  at  this  time,  because : 

The  first  dividend  was  paid  on  one  of  the  great 
railroad  enterprises. 

INFLUENCE  OF  THE  FIRST  DIVIDEND 

For  the  time  being  that  seemed  to  sound  the 
death  knell  o<f  the  common  road  steam-propelled 
vehicle.  The  engineers  so  strongly  advocating  the 
railroad  had  proven  their  various  propositions  in  the 
eyes  of  those  who  had  the  financial  powers  to  engage 
in  the  extensive  introduction  and  development  of  the 
new  means  of  transportation.  Further  demonstra- 
tion, extensively  exploited,  was  also  made  to*  the 
satisfaction  of  those  investors,  that  vehicles  could  be 
pulled  with  less  power  on  a  hard  roadbed  such  as  a 
railway,  than  on  an  uneven  and  sometimes  soft  path 
such  as  common  roads.  It  seems  clear  that  these 
and  various  other  arguments,  heartily  urged  at 
that  time,  and,  in  some  cases,  unquestionable  from 
a  technical  standpoint,  were  really  decided  by  that 
first  dividend.  And  the  common  road  vehicle  with 
the  support  and  enthusiasm  of  its  backers  largely 
withdrawn  from  it  dropped  to  a  position  greatly 
subordinate  to  the  other  branch  of  transportation. 
19 


AUTOMOBILE  BIOGRAPHIES 

THE  STEAM  ROAD  VEHICLE  AGAIN 

On  the  other  hand,  the  development  which  came  in 
the  next  few  decades  in  the  railroad  department 
brought  also  a  renewed  demand  for  common  road 
vehicles  for  certain  classes  of  work  or  for  certain 
localities.  The  steam  vehicle  for  stationary  pur- 
poses, and  also  for  the  locomotive,  were  being  rapidly 
developed  and  refined.  The  railroad  settled  down  to 
the  idea  of  a  power  unit  drawing  numerous  wagons. 
That  has  been  consistently  adhered  to  to  the  present 
day,  and  only  in  the  past  decade  have  we  gone  back 
to  the  old  and  first  principles  of  embodying  the 
mechanical  propelling  means  in  the  same  vehicle  that 
transports  the  passengers  or  goods.  So,  while  Han- 
cock and  his  worthy  contemporaries  passed  into  his- 
tory, other  common  road  steam  advocates  continued 
their  isolated  attempts  up  to  and  past  the  middle  of 
the  nineteenth  century,  although  without  any  such 
general  enthusiasm  as  prevailed  in  the  twenties  and 
early  thirties. 

NEW  GENERATION  OF  INVENTORS 

Many  attempts  in  America,  such  as  those  of 
Fisher,  Dudgeon,  and  others,  and  the  work  in  Eng- 
land by  numerous  inventors  and  machine  manufac- 
turers, such  as  Tangye,  Hilditch,  Snowden,  F.  Hill, 
Jr.,  aided  by  the  engineers,  Macadam,  Telford  and 
M'Neil,  who  were  improving  the  common  roads  so 
that  they  might  approach  the  advantageous  condi- 
tions of  the  railroad,  assume  prominence  in  connec- 
tion wTith  that  period  of  the  history.  Rickett's  car- 
riage, in  1858;  Carrett's,  in  1862;  Boulton's,  in  1867; 
Catley's,  in  1869,  and  others,  were  among  the 
20 


ORIGIN   AND  DEVELOPMENT 

finger-posts  of  that  time,  pointing  to  more  notable 
achievements  of  the  future. 

But  in  England  the  Act  of  Parliament,  passed  in 
1836  and  in  force  almost  to  to-day,  known  as  the 
Locomotive  Act,  was  the  deterrent  to  progress  in 
common  road  steam  locomotion.  This  condition  even 
continued  after  the  select  committee  of  Parliament, 
in  1873,  endeavored  to  remove  some  of  the  restric- 
tions, but  succeeded  only  in  producing  the  Act  of 
1878,  which  in  no  way  improved  the  position  of  the 
common  road  vehicle. 

In  France  and  on  the  Continent  political  conditions 
doubtless  mitigated  against  any  general  advance,  and 
though  this  period  included  the  great  development 
of  machinery  and  construction  which  paved  the  way 
for  the  future,  it  is  not  of  prominence  in  this  history. 

A  PERIOD  OF  EXPERIMENTING 

A  new  era  may  be  said  to  have  commenced  in  the 
early  part  of  the  seventies  when  we  find  Amedee 
Bollee  exhibiting  a  steam  machine  at  the  Vienna  Ex- 
position. In  the  seventies  were  also  experiments  on 
modified  forms  of  power  on  vehicle  propelling  mo- 
tors other  than  steam,  but  it  still  seemed  to  be  the 
steam  vehicle  that  characterized  the  new  period  of 
activity  which  blossomed  out  in  the  early  eighties 
with  many  ardent  advocates,  and  exhibited  a  type  of 
light  vehicle  with  efficient  strong  boiler  and  light  en- 
gine. America  should  not  be  overlooked,  however, 
when  we  consider  the  one  small  vehicle  of  Austin, 
which  was  constructed  in  Massachusetts,  and  at- 
tracted great  attention  at  the  shows  of  the  Ocean 
Circus,  in  the  early  seventies,  or  thereabout.  Bouton, 

21 


AUTOMOBILE  BIOGRAPHIES 

of  France,  came  to  the  fore  in  the  early  eighties,  and 
the  light  steam  vehicle  seemed  on  the  high  road  to  a 
great  development  and  a  monopoly  of  the  common 
roads  vehicle  industry,  until  its  competitor  appeared 
in  what  is  now  popularly  known  as  the  gasoline 
vehicle  in  the  middle  eighties. 

THE  SELDEN  PATENT 

From  this  time  on  the  great  industry  of  to-day 
advanced  in  strides  and  jumps,  but  while  the  future 
had  been  anticipated  in  some  suggestions  and  experi- 
ments in  Europe,  at  last  one  great  mind  had  delved 
into  the  problem  and  anticipated  the  great  future  of 
the  new  type  of  vehicle  in  America.  Selden,  after 
a  decade  or  more  of  study  and  work,  and  well- 
directed  experiments,  had  made  his  own  deductions, 
and  with  clear  discerning  had  concluded  what,  to  his 
mind,  would  be  the  vehicle  in  the  future.  The  re- 
sult of  his  labors  and  the  subsequent  filing,  in  1879, 
of  a  patent  application,  when  considered  in  connec- 
tion with  his  persistent  work  from  that  time  on, 
even  to  the  present  day,  would  seem  to  justly  mark 
him  as  the  pioneer  in  this  type  of  vehicle;  in  fact, 
he  was  so  called  by  the  Commissioner  of  Patents  of 
the  United  States  when  publishing  his  annual  re- 
port, immediately  after  the  issue  of  Selden's  patent. 

ADVENT  OF  THE  HYDRO-CARBON  ENGINE 

Then  followed  the  work  on  carbureters  and  igni- 
tion devices  and  details  of  construction  adapting  the 
liquid  hydro-carbons  of  uncertain  quality  to  more 
satisfactory  use.  Details  became  and  still  are  nu- 
merous, and  optional  to  a  great  extent,  but  the  liquid 
hydro-carbon  engine  of  the  compression  type  clistin- 

22 


ORIGIN   AND  DEVELOPMENT 

guished  the  new  epoch.  The  development  of  the  sta- 
tionary engine  operated  with  gas  from  receivers  also 
proceeded  rapidly  in  those  days,  though  it  was  well 
into  the  eighties  before  the  gas  engine  of  the  compres- 
sion type  involved  a  commercially  successful  industry 
to  any  extent ;  not  for  several  years  did  the  principal 
manufacturers  take  up  commercially  the  proposition 
of  the  liquid  hydro-carbon  application.  The  devel- 
opment of  the  small  engine  using  liquid  hydro-car- 
bons received  attention  from  Marcus,  in  Austria,  and 
the  persistent  attention  of  Benz  and  of  Daimler,  in 
Germany.  The  two  latter,  furthermore,  adapted 
their  engines  to  vehicles,  and  enthusiasm  was  great 
when  Benz  ran  his  three-wheeler,  with  explosive 
engine,  through  the  streets  of  his  native  town. 

PROGRESS  IN  FRANCE  AND  AMERICA 

England  was  still  shackled;  but  in  France  many 
were  inspired  to  change  from  steam  to  the 
hydro-carbon  engine.  About  1890  we  find  sev- 
eral French  manufacturers  procuring  engines,  or 
the  right  to  manufacture  the  small  explosive  engines 
developed  by  the  Germans,  and  promptly  adapting 
them  to  their  vehicle  construction,  already  well  de- 
veloped for  steam  propulsion.  Panhard  &  Levassor ; 
Bouton,  with  his  backer,  DeDion ;  Bollee,  now  Leon, 
the  nephew ;  Delahaye  and  Peugeot,  were  among  the 
earliest  Frenchmen  to  appreciate  the  commercial  pos- 
sibilities of  the  new  type.  Then  the  large  manufac- 
turers, already  experienced  in  other  lines,  and  par- 
ticularly in  cycle  manufacture,  entered  the  field  in 
1893,  1894  and  1895  ;  among  them  such  old  concerns 
as  DeDetrich,  manufacturers  for  one  hundred  and 
23 


AUTOMOBILE  BIOGRAPHIES 

more  years,  grasped  the  opportunity.  America  was 
not  idle,  and  while  road  conditions  in  this  country 
militated  largely  against  the  early  attempts  in  the 
industry,  the  efforts  of  the  Duryeas  and  of  Haynes, 
and  various  other  experimenters,  who  have  since  re- 
tired, were  heard  from.  It  was  difficult,  however, 
with  the  obstacles  then  existing  in  America,  for  these 
early  workers  to  secure  encouragement,  and  progress 
wras  slow,  just  as  the  endeavors  of  Selden  and  some 
of  the  early  steam  vehicle  people  had  received  noth- 
ing but  discouragement  at  the  hands  of  those  whom 
they  endeavored  to  lead  to  the  success  of  large 
manufacturing  undertakings. 

However,  the  Times-Herald  race,  in  Chicago, 
near  the  close  of  1895,  brought  forth  a  large  number 
of  inventors  and  several  starters,  including  electric, 
steam  and  gasoline  vehicles,  and  the  showing  was 
such  as  to  practically  satisfy  the  doubting  that  these 
were  the  beginning  of  the  industry  in  this  country. 

THE  ENGLISH  REVIVAL 

Abroad,  the  leaders  in  the  automobile  movement 
organized  the  now  historic  races  from  Paris  in  dif- 
ferent directions.  With  the  runs  of  1894,  1895  and 
1896,  and  in  each  successive  year  thereafter,  and 
with  the  road  and  other  conditions  improved,  the 
industry  rapidly  developed.  England  also  was  at 
last  reached.  The  restraints  that  had  existed  there 
for  more  than  half  a  century  could  no  more  be  en- 
dured. The  burden  was  finally  thrown  off,  for 
which  great  credit  is  due  to  Sir  David  Salomon,  and 
the  offensive  Locomotive  Act  was  at  last  repealed  in 
August,  1896.  The  subsequent  Locomotive  Act 
24 


ORIGIN   AND  DEVELOPMENT 

which  came  into  effect  November  14, -1896,  marked 
a  red-letter  day  in  motoring  history  for  England,  and 
was  justly  celebrated  by  a  procession  of  vehicles 
from  London  to  Brighton.  Salomon  had  previously 
organized  an  exhibition  in  England,  and  had  im- 
ported a  French  car,  and  as  a  prominent  member  of 
scientific  and  technical  societies,  in  which  he  pre- 
sented many  papers  on  the  subject,  had  done,  possi- 
bly, more  than  any  other  individual  to1  influence  pub- 
lic sentiment  and  to  secure  this  new  enactment. 
English  manufacturers  were  not  entirely  unprepared 
for  the  change,  and  a  great  wave  of  interest  and 
activity  swept  the  country.  Naturally  this  was  fol- 
lowed by  a  reaction,  but  since  then  a  counter-reaction 
has  set  in,  resulting  in  the  present  grand  development 
of  that  class  of  manufacturing  in  the  British  Isles. 

The  small  steam  vehicle  of  Whitney,  and  his  con- 
temporaries, the  Stanleys  in  the  United  States,  then 
came  to  the  fore.  Under  energetic  promotion  thou- 
sands of  small  vehicles  of  that  type  were  manufac- 
tured and  put  into  use.  These,  in  no  small  meas- 
ure, became  to  the  public  at  large  the  convincing 
object  lesson  of  the  practicability  and  possibilities  of 
the  small  automobile  for  every-day  use. 

MODERN  CONDITIONS 

The  Paris  show  of  1900  revealed  a  great  forward 
step  in  the  development  of  constructions,   and  the 
offer  immediately  thereafter  of  the  James  Gordon 
.  Bennett     trophy     of     international     racing     gave 
to  the  automobile  industry  such  an  impetus  as  has 
seldom  been  the  good  fortune  of  any  other  art  to  re- 
ceive.    To-day  the  automobile  has  reached  that  stage 
25 


AUTOMOBILE   BIOGRAPHIES 

of  perfection  where  the  question  is  no  longer  whether 
or  not  the  vehicle  will  carry  you  to  a  certain  place 
and  back.  Now  it  is  only  a  question  of  the  speed, 
absence  of  vibration,  and  sweetness  of  running  the 
engine,  absence  of  all  noise,  and  other  details  of  re- 
finement. Vehicles  are  now  of  the  Pullman  type, 
luxurious  to  the  extent  of  prices  ranging  into  the 
thirties  of  thousands  of  dollars,  while  on  the  other 
hand,  thousands  of  small  vehicles,  costing  between 
five  hundred  and  one  thousand  dollars,  are  annually 
made  and  sold. 

The  steam  machine,  after  being  practically  suc- 
ceeded by  the  gasoline,  was  again  improved  by  the 
flash  boiler.  The  main  development  of  this  new 
power  was  carried  on  by  Serpollet,  of  France,  and 
later,  by  Rollin  T.  White,  in  the  United  States,  both 
whom  have  become  most  able  competitors  of  man- 
ufacturers of  machines  of  other  classes. 

THE  INDUSTRY  TO-DAY 

The  beginning  of  1905  finds  us  with  the  annual 
shows,  which  have  been  consecutive  for  many  years, 
while  the  census  of  vehicles  now  in  use,  or  made  in  the 
last  ten  years,  will  aggregate  several  hundred  thou- 
sand. The  annual  production  is  estimated  as  probably 
approximating  one  hundred  thousand  in  a  few  of 
the  principal  countries.  The  value  of  the  electrical 
vehicle,  particularly  as  the  town  vehicle  for  anything 
except  speeding,  is  now  well  established,  and  reports 
from  Paris  as  well  as  New  York  indicate  the  lack  of 
facilities  of  factories  in  this  line  for  producing  these 
carriages  as  rapidly  as  demanded.  Heavy  'buses 
and  individual  vehicles  alike  are  also  popular. 
26 


PIONEER  INVENTORS 


PIONEER  INVENTORS 

NICHOLAS  JOSEPH  CUGNOT, 
WILLIAM  MURDOCK, 
OLIVER  EVANS, 
WILLIAM  SYMINGTON, 
NATHAN  READ, 
RICHARD  TREVITHICK, 
DAVID  GORDON, 
W.  H.  JAMES, 
GOLDSWORTHY  GUENEY, 
THOMAS  BLANCHARD, 
M.  JOHNSON, 
WALTER  HANCOCK, 
W.  T.  JAMES, 
FRANCIS  MACERONI, 
RICHARD  ROBERTS, 
J.  SCOTT  RUSSELL, 
W.  H.  CHURCH, 
ETIENNE  LENOIR, 
AMEDEE  BOLLEE, 
GEORGE  B.  SELDEN, 
SIEGFRIED  MARCUS, 
CARL  BENZ, 
GOTTLIEB  DAIMLER, 
M.  LEVASSOR, 
LEON  SERPOLLET. 


29 


PIONEER  INVENTORS 

NICHOLAS  JOSEPH  CUGNOT 

Born  at  Void,  Lorraine,  France,  September  25, 
1725.  Died  in  Paris,  October  2,  1804. 

Concerning  the  early  life  of  Cugnot,  little  is 
known.  He  was  educated  for  the  engineering  serv- 
ice of  the  French  army,  and  gained  distinction  as  a 
military  and  mechanical  engineer.  He  also  served 
as  a  military  engineer  in  Germany.  Soon  afterward 
he  entered  the  service  of  Prince  Charles  of  Lorraine, 
and  for  a  time  resided  at  Brussels,  where  he  gave 
lessons  in  the  military  art.  He  did  not  return  to 
his  native  land  until  1763,  and  then  invented  a  new 
gun,  with  which  the  cavalry  were  equipped. 

This  brought  him  to  the  attention  of  the  Compte 
de  Saxe,  and  under  the  patronage  of  that  nobleman, 
he  constructed  in  1765  his  first  locomotive.  This 
was  a  small  wagon.  On  its  first  run  it  carried  four 
persons,  and  traveled  at  the  rate  of  two  and  a  quar- 
ter miles  an  hour.  The  boiler,  however,  being  too 
small,  the  carriage  could  go  only  for  fifteen  or  twenty 
minutes  before  the  steam  was  exhausted,  and  it  was 
necessary  to  stop  the  engine  for  nearly  the  same  time, 
to  enable  the  boiler  to  raise  the  steam  to  the  maxi- 
mum pressure,  before  it  could  proceed  on  its  journey. 
This  machine  was  a  disappointment,  in  consequence 
of  the  inefficiency  of  the  feed  pumps.  It  has  been 
stated  that  while  in  Brussels  he  had  made  a  smaller 
vehicle,  which,  if  so,  was  soon  after  1760. 

Several  small  accidents  happened  during  the  trial, 
for  the  machine  could  not  be  completely  controlled, 
but  it  was  considered  on  the  whole  to  be  fairly  suc- 
cessful and  worthy  of  further  attention.  The  sug- 
gestion was  made  that  provided  it  could  be  made 
31 


AUTOMOBILE    BIOGRAPHIES 

more  powerful,  and  its  mechanism  improved,  it  might 
be  used  to  drag  cannon  into  the  field  instead  of  using 
horses  for  that  purpose.  Consequently,  Cugnot  was 
ordered  by  the  Due  de  Choiseul,  Minister  of  War,  to 
proceed  with  the  construction  of  an  improved  and 
more  powerful  machine.  This  vehicle,  which  was 
finished  in  1770,  cost  twenty  thousand  livres.  It  was 
in  two  parts,  a  wagon  and  an  engine.  The  wagon 
was  carried  on  two  wheels  and  had  a  seat  for  the 
steersman ;  the  engine  and  boiler  were  supported  on 
a  single  driving-wheel  in  front  of  the  wagon.  The 
two  parts  were  united  by  a  movable  pin.  A  toothed 
quadrant,  fixed  on  the  framing  of  the  fore  part,  was 
actuated  by  spur  gearing  on  the  upright  steersman's 
shaft  in  close  proximity  to  the  seat,  by  means  of 
which  the  conductor  could  cause  the  carriage  to  turn 
in  either  direction,  at  an  angle  of  from  fifteen  to 
twenty  degrees.  In  front  was  a  round  copper  boiler, 
having  a  furnace  inside,  two  small  chimneys,  two 
single-acting  brass  cylinders  communicating  with  the 
boiler  by  the  steam  pipe,  and  other  machinery.  On 
each  side  of  the  driving-wheel,  ratchet  wheels  were 
fixed,  and  as  one  of  the  pistons  descended,  the  piston- 
rod  drew  a  crank,  the  pawl  of  which,  working  into 
the  ratchet-wheel,  caused  the  driving-wheel  to  make  a 
quarter  of  a  revolution.  By  gearing,  the  same  move- 
ment placed  the  piston  on  the  other  side  in  a  position 
for  making  a  stroke,  and  turned  the  four- way  cock, 
so  as  to  open  the  second  cylinder  to  the  steam  and  the 
first  cylinder  to  the  atmosphere.  The  second  piston 
then  descended,  causing  the  leading  wheel  to  make 
another  quarter  of  a  revolution,  and  restoring  the  first 
piston  to  its  original  position.  In  order  to  run  the 
32 


PIONEER  INVENTORS 

vehicle  backwards,  the  pawl  was  made  to  act  on  the 
upper  side,  changing  the  position  of  the  spring  which 
pressed  upon  it;  then,  when  the  engine  was  started, 
the  pawl  caused  the  driving-wheel  to  turn  a  quarter 
of  a  revolution  in  the  opposite  direction  with  every 
stroke  of  the  piston. 

This  machine  wras  first  tried  in  1/70  in  the  pres- 
ence of  a  distinguished  assembly,  that  included  the 
Due  de  Choiseul ;  General  Gribeauval,  First  Inspector- 
General  of  Artillery ;  the  Compte  de  Saxe,  and  others. 
Subsequently,  other  trials  of  it  were  made,  with  satis- 
factory results  generally.  The  heavy  over-balancing 
weight  of  the  engine  and  boiler  in  front  rendered  it 
difficult  to  control.  On  one  of  its  trips  it  ran  into  a 
wall  in  turning  a  corner  and  was  partly  wrecked. 
Further  experiments  with  it  were  abandoned,  and  in 
1800  it  was  deposited  in  the  Conservatoire  des  Arts 
et  Metier,  Paris,  where  it  still  remains. 

At  a  later  period  of  his  life,  having  lost  his  means 
of  support,  Cugnot's  public  services  were  considered 
to  entitle  him  to  a  reward  from  the  State.  Louis 
Fifteenth  gave  him  a  pension  of  six  hundred  livres, 
but  the  French  Revolution  coming  on,  he  was  de- 
prived even  of  that  pittance,  and  he  lived  in  abject 
misery  in  Brussels.  His  carriage  was  then  in  the 
arsenal,  and  a  revolutionary  committee,  during  the 
reign  of  terror,  tried  to  take  it  out  and  reduce  it  to 
scrap,  but  was  driven  off.  When  Napoleon  came  to 
the  throne,  he  restored  the  pension  and  increased  it  to 
one  thousand  livres.  In  addition  to  his  inventions, 
Cugnot  wrote  several  \vorks  on  military  art  and 
fortification. 


33 


AUTOMOBILE  BIOGRAPHIES 

WILLIAM  MURDOCK 

Born  in  Bellow  Mill,  near  Old  Cumnock,  Ayrshire, 
Scotland,  August  21,  1754.  Died  at  Sycamore  Hill, 
November  15,  1839. 

Murdock  was  the  son  of  John  Murdoch,  a  mill- 
wright. He  was  modestly  educated,  and  brought  up 
to  his  father's  trade,  helping  to  build  and  put  up  mill 
machinery.  A  curious  production  of  the  father  and 
son,  at  this  period,  was  a  wooden  horse,  worked  by 
mechanical  power,  on  which  young  Murdock  trav- 
eled about  the  country.  When  he  was  twenty-three 
years  of  age  he  entered  the  employment  of  the  fa- 
mous engineering  firm  of  Boulton  &  Watt,  at  Soho, 
and  there  remained  throughout  his  active  life. 

Watt  recognized  in  him  a  valuable  assistant,  and 
his  services  were  jealously  regarded.  On  his  part 
he  devoted  himself  unreservedly  to  the  interests  of 
his  employers.  In  1777  he  was  sent  to  Cornwall  to 
look  after  the  pumps  and  engines  set  up  by  the  firm 
in  the  mines,  and  for  a  long  period  he  lived  at  Red- 
ruth.  For  some  five  years  after  1800  he  was  engi- 
neer and  superintendent  at  the  Soho  foundry.  While 
living  at  Redruth,  in  1792,  he  began  a  series  of  ex- 
periments on  the  illuminating  properties  of  the  gases 
of  coal,  wood,  peat,  and  other  substances,  and  in 
1799  put  up  a  gas-making  apparatus  at  Soho.  In 
1803  he  fitted  the  Soho  factory  with  a  gas-lighting 
system.  Other  inventions  that  are  credited  to  him 
are  models  for  an  oscillating  engine  and  a  rotary  en- 
gine, a  method  of  making  steam  pipes,  an  apparatus 
for  utilizing  the  force  of  compressed  air,  and  a  steam 
gun. 

His  early  training  and  all  his  surroundings  nat- 

34 


WILLIAM  MURDOCK 


PIONEER  INVENTORS 

urally  and  inevitably  interested  Murdock  in  the  sub- 
ject of  steam  locomotion,  and  before  1784  he  began 
to  experiment  on  these  lines.  That  he  made  definite 
progress  is  shown  in  a  letter  that  Thomas  Wilson, 
agent  in  Cornwall  of  Boulton  &  Watt,  wrote  to  his 
employers  in  August,  1786,  saying,  "William  Mur- 
dock desires  me  to  inform  you  that  he  has  made  a 
small  engine  of  three-quarter-inch  diameter  and  one 
and  one-half  inch  stroke,  that  he  has  applied  to  a 
small  carriage,  which  answers  amazingly."  He  had 
made  and  run  this  model  in  1784,  and  it  is  still  in 
existence,  and  in  the  possession  of  the  Messrs. 
Richard  and  George  Tangye,  England. 

This  model  was  on  the  high-pressure  principle,  and 
ran  on  three  wheels,  the  single  front  one  for  steering. 
The  vertical  boiler,  nearly  over  the  rear  axle,  was 
heated  by  a  spirit-lamp,  and  the  machine  stood  only 
a  little  more  than  a  foot  high.  The  axle  was  cranked 
in  the  middle  and  turned  by  a  rod  connected  to1  a 
beam  moved  up  and  down  by  the  piston-rod  project- 
ing from  the  top  of  the  cylinder.  Yet  it  developed 
considerable  speed.  It  is  interesting  to  note  that  the 
use  O'f  the  crank  for  converting  the  reciprocating 
motion  of  the  steam  engine  into  rotary  was  patented 
by  Pickard  in  1780,  and  Murdock's  was  probably  its, 
first  application  to  self-propelled  carriages. 

The  first  experiment  with  this  little  engine  \vas 
made  in  Murdock's  house  at  Redruth,  when  the  loco- 
motive successfully  hauled  a  wagon  round  the  room, 
the  single  wheel,  placed  in  front  of  the  engine,  fixed 
in  such  a  position  as  to  enable  it  to  run  round  a  circle. 

Dr.  Smiles,  in  his  work  on  inventors,  tells  an 
amusing  story  concerning  this  machine.  He  says: 
35 


AUTOMOBILE   BIOGRAPHIES 

"Another  experiment  was  made  out  of  doors,  on 
which  occasion,  small  though  the  engine  was,  it  fairly 
outran  the  speed  of  its  inventor.  One  night,  after 
returning  from  his  duties  at  the  mine  at  Redruth, 
Murdock  went  with  his  model  locomotive  to  the 
avenue  leading  to  the  church,  about  a  mile  from  the 
town.  The  walk  was  narrow,  straight  and  level. 
Having  lit  the  lamp,  the  water  soon  boiled,  and  off 
started  the  engine  with  the  inventor  after  it.  Shortly 
after  he  heard  distant  shouts  of  terror.  It  was  too 
dark  to  perceive  objects,  but  he  found,  on  following 
up  the  machine,  that  the  cries  had  proceeded  from  the 
worthy  vicar,  who,  while  going  along  the  walk,  had 
met  the  hissing  and  fiery  little  monster,  which  he 
declared  he  took  to  be  the  Evil  One  in  propria 
persona !" 

But  Murdock  was  too  useful  a  man  to  Boulton  & 
Watt  to  be  allowed  to  have  free  rein,  and  his  inclina- 
tion toward  steam  locomotion  invention  was  appar- 
ently curbed,  though  it  would  appear  Watt  thought 
the  roads  of  that  time  an  insurmountable  obstacle  to 
the  development  of  road  vehicles,  and  wanted  Mur- 
dock to  devote  his  time  to  mechanical  matters  more 
ripe  for  success.  Boulton,  writing  to  Watt  from 
Truro,  in  September,  1 796,  tells  how  he  met  Murdock 
on  his  way  to  London  to  get  a  patent  on  a  new  model, 
and  how  he  persuaded  him  to  turn  back.  This  model 
was  for  a  steam  carriage  that  was  afterward  shown 
as  able  to  travel  freely  around  a  room  with  a  light 
load  of  shovel,  poker  and  tongs  upon  it.  His  was 
probably  the  first  high-pressure  steam-engine  vehi- 
cle run  in  England.  Though  only  a  small  model,  it 
did  its  proportionate  work  well. 

36 


PIONEER  INVENTORS 

Watt  continued  to  oppose  Mur dock's  scheme,  but 
on  one  occasion  suggested  that  he  should  be  allowed 
an  advance  of  five  hundred  dollars  to  enable  him  to 
prosecute  his  experiments,  and  if  he  succeeded  within 
a  year  in  making  an  engine  capable  of  drawing  a 
post  chaise,  carrying  two  passengers  and  the  driver, 
at  four  miles  an  hour,  it  was  suggested  that  he  should 
be  taken  as  partner  into  the  locomotive  business,  for 
which  Boulton  and  Watt  wrere  to  provide  the  neces- 
sary capital.  This  proposition  was  never  carried 
out.  Again,  in  1786,  Watt  said:  "I  wish  William 
could  be  brought  to  do>  as  we  do,  to  mind  the  business 
in  hand,  and  let  such  as  Symington  and  Sadler  throw 
away  their  time  and  money  in  hunting  shadows." 
Murdock  continued  to  speculate  about  steam  locomo- 
tion on  common  roads,  but  never  carried  his  ideas 
further.  He  retired  from  the  employment  of  Boul- 
ton &  Watt  in  1830,  and  practically  retired  from  all 
work  at  the  same  time. 

Murdock  seems  to  have  had  a  very  clear  idea  of  the 
possibilities  of  steam  propulsion  on  the  common 
roads.  Had  circumstances  permitted  he  might  well 
have  been  expected  to  have  solved  the  problem  in 
1/96  quite  as  completely  as  his  successors  did  in 
1835.  But  he  was  a  quarter  of  a  century  ahead  of 
the  time.  Even  the  moderate  public  interest  that  ex- 
isted later  on  had  not  manifested  itself  at  all  in  his 
day  and  the  condition  of  the  English  highways  of- 
fered almost  insuperable  obstacles  to  steam  vehicular 
travel.  Personally  his  lack  of  self-assertiveness  and 
his  feeling  of  dependence  upon  Boulton  and  Watt 
also  held  him  back.  So  he  remained  simply  one  of 
the  pioneer  investigators  pointing  the  way  for  others. 
37 


AUTOMOBILE  BIOGRAPHIES 

OLIVER  EVANS 

Born  in  1755  or  1756,  in  Newport,  Del.  Died  in 
Philadelphia,  April  21,  1819. 

Little  has  been  preserved  respecting  the  early  his- 
tory of  Oliver  Evans,  who  has  been  aptly  styled  "The 
Watt  of  America."  His  parents  wrere  farming  peo- 
ple, and  he  had  only  an  ordinary  common-school  edu- 
cation. At  the  age  of  fourteen  he  was  apprenticed 
to  a  wheelwright  or  wagonmaker,  and  continued  his 
meager  education  by  studying  at  night  time  by  the 
light  that  he  made  by  burning  chips  and  shavings  in 
the  fireplace. 

While  yet  an  apprentice  his  attention  was  turned 
to  the  subject  of  propelling  land  carriages  without 
animal  power.  But  the  lack  of  definite  knowledge 
in  regard  to  steam  power  compelled  him  to  abandon 
his  plans,  although  his  experiments  were  continued 
for  a  long  time.  Soon  after  attaining  his  majority 
he  was  engaged  in  making  card-teeth  by  hand,  and  in 
connection  therewith  developed  several  labor-saving 
improvements.  He  also  invented  improvements  in 
the  construction  of  machinery  of  flour  mills  that  ef- 
fected a  complete  revolution  in  the  manufacture  of 
flour.  These  improvements  consisted  of  the  elevator, 
the  conveyor,  the  hopper-boy,  the  drill  and  the  de- 
scender, which  various  machines  were  applied  in  dif- 
ferent mills  so  as  to  perform  mechanically  every  nec- 
essary movement  of  the  grain  and  meal  from  one  part 
of  the  mill  to  the  other,  causing  a  saving  of  fully  one- 
half  in  the  labor  of  mill  attendance  and  manufactur- 
ing the  flour  better.  These  improvements  were  not 
accepted  by  the  mill  owners  at  the  outset,  and  Evans 
spent  many  discouraging  years  before  he  could  finally 

38 


OLIVER  EVANS 


PIONEER  INVENTORS 

persuade  the  manufacturers  of  the  utility  of  his  in- 
ventions. In  the  end,  however,  he  lived  to  see  his 
inventions  generally  introduced,  and  he  profited 
largely  thereby. 

In  the  year  1786,  Evans  petitioned  the  Legisla- 
ture of  Pennsylvania  for  the  exclusive  right  to  use 
his  improvements  in  flour  mills  and  steam  carriages 
in  that  State,  and  in  the  year  following  presented  a 
similar  petition  to  the  Legislature  of  Maryland.  In 
the  former  instance  he  was  only  successful  so  far  as 
to  obtain  the  privilege  of  the  mill  improvements,  his 
representations  concerning  steam  carriages  being 
considered  as  savoring  too  much  of  insanity  to  de- 
serve notice.  He  was  more  fortunate  in  Maryland, 
for,  although  the  steam  project  was  laughed  at,  yet 
one  of  his  friends,  a  member,  very  judiciously  ob- 
served that  the  grant  could  injure  no  one,  for  he  did 
not  think  that  any  man  in  the  world  had  thought  of 
such  a  thing  before,  and  therefore  he  wished  the  en- 
couragement might  be  afforded,  as  there  was  a  pros- 
pect that  it  would  produce  something  useful.  This 
kind  of  argument  had  its  effect,  and  Evans  received 
all  that  he  asked  for,  and  from  that  period  considered 
himself  bound  in  honor  to  the  State  of  Maryland  to 
produce  a  steam  carriage,  as  soon  as  his  means  would 
allow  him. 

For  several  years  succeeding  the  granting  of  his 
petition  by  the  Legislature  of  Maryland,  Evans  en- 
deavored to  obtain  some  person  of  pecuniary  re- 
sources to  join  with  him  in  his  plans;  and  for  this 
purpose  explained  his  views  by  drafts,  and  otherwise, 
to  some  of  the  first  mechanics  in  the  country.  Al- 
though the  persons  addressed  appeared,  in  several  in- 
39 


AUTOMOBILE    BIOGRAPHIES 

stances,  to  understand  them,  they  declined  any  as- 
sistance from  a  fear  of  the  expense  and  difficulty  of 
their  execution. 

In  the  year  1800,  or  1801,  Evans,  never  having 
found  anyone  willing  to  contribute  to<  the  expense,  or 
even  to  encourage  him  in  his  efforts,  determined  to 
construct  a  steam  carriage  at  his  own  expense. 
Previous  to  commencing  he  explained  his  views  to 
Robert  Patterson,  Professor  of  Mathematics  in  the 
University  of  Pennsylvania,  and  to  an  eminent  Eng- 
lish engineer.  They  both  declared  the  principles 
new  to  them,  and  advised  the  plan  as  highly  worthy 
of  a  fair  experiment.  They  were  the  only  persons 
who  had  any  confidence,  or  afforded  encouraging 
advice.  He  also  communicated  his  plans  to<  B.  F. 
Latrobe,  the  scientist,  who  publicly  pronounced  them 
as  chimerical,  and  attempted  to  demonstrate  the  ab- 
surdity of  Evans'  principles  in  his  report  to  the 
Philosophical  Society  of  Pennsylvania  on  steam  en- 
gines. In  this  he  also  endeavored  tO'  show  the  im- 
possibility of  making  steamboats  useful. 

Evans  commenced  and  had  made  considerable 
progress  in  the  construction  of  a  steam  carriage, 
when  the  idea  occurred  to  him  that  as  his  steam  en- 
gine was  altogether  different  in  form,  as  well  as  in 
principle,  from  any  other  in  use,  a  patent  could  be 
obtained  for  it,  and  then  applied  to  mills  more  profit- 
ably than  to  carriages.  The  steam  carriage  was 
accordingly  laid  aside  for  a  season  of  more  leisure, 
and  the  construction  of  a  small  engine  was  com- 
menced, with  a  cylinder  six  inches  in  diameter  and 
a  piston  of  eighteen  inches  stroke,  for  a  mill  to  grind 
plaster  of  paris.  The  expense  of  its  construction 
40 


PIONEER  INVENTORS 

far  exceeded  Evans'  calculation,  and  before  the  en- 
gine was  finished  he  found  it  cost  him  all  he  was 
worth.  He  had  then  to  begin  the  world  anew,  at  the 
age  of  forty-eight,  with  a  large  family  to  support, 
and  that,  too,  with  a  knowledge  that  if  the  trial 
failed  his  credit  would  be  entirely  ruined,  and  his 
prospects  for  the  remainder  of  life  dark  and  gloomy. 
But  fortune  favored  him,  and  his  success  was  com- 
plete. 

In  a  brief  account,  given  by  himself,  of  his  ex- 
periments in  steam,  he  says :  "I  could  break  and 
grind  three  hundred  bushels  of  plaster  of  pans,  or 
twelve  tons,  in  twenty-four  hours;  and  to>  show  its 
operations  more  fully  to  the  public,  I  applied  it  to 
saw  stone,  on  the  side  of  Market  Street,  where  the 
driving  of  twelve  saws  in  heavy  frames,  sawing  at 
the  rate  of  one  hundred  feet  of  marble  in  twelve 
hours,  made  a  great  show  and  excited  much  atten- 
tion. I  thought  this  was  sufficient  to  convince  the 
thousands  of  spectators  of  the  utility  of  my  discov- 
ery, but  I  frequently  heard  them  inquire  if  the  power 
could  be  applied  to  saw  timber  as  well  as  stone,  to 
grind  grain,  propel  boats,  etc.,  and  though  I  an- 
swered in  the  affirmative,  they  still  doubted.  I  there- 
fore determined  to  apply  my  engine  to  all  new  uses ; 
to  introduce  it  and  them  to  the  public.  This  experi- 
ment completely  tested  the  correctness  of  my  princi- 
ples. The  power  of  my  engine  rises  in  a  geometri- 
cal proportion,  while  the  consumption  of  the  fuel  has 
only  an  arithmetical  ratio;  in  such  proportion  that 
every  time  I  added  one- fourth  more  to  the  consump- 
tion of  the  fuel,  its  powers  were  doubled;  and  that 
twice  the  quantity  of  fuel  required  to  drive  one  saw, 


AUTOMOBILE   BIOGRAPHIES 

would  drive  sixteen  saws  at  least;  for  when  I  drove 
two  saws  the  consumption  was  eight  bushels  of  coal 
in  twelve  hours,  but  when  twelve  saws  were  driven, 
the  consumption  was  not  more  than  ten  bushels,  so 
that  the  more  we  resist  the  steam,  the  greater  is  the 
effect  of  the  engine.  On  these  principles  very  light 
but  powerful  engines  can  be  made  suitable  for  pro- 
pelling boats  and  land  carriages  without  the  great 
encumbrance  of  their  weight  as  mentioned  in  La- 
trobe's  demonstration.'' 

In  the  year  1840,  Evans,  by  order  of  the  Board 
of  Health  of  Philadelphia,  constructed  at  his  works, 
situated  a  mile  and  a  half  from  the  water,  a  machine 
for  cleaning  docks.  It  consisted  of  a  large  flat  or 
scow,  with  a  steam  engine  of  five  horse-power  on 
board,  to  work  the  machinery  to  raise  the  mud  into 
the  scows.  This  was  considered  a  fine  opportunity 
to  show  the  public  that  his  engine  could  propel  both 
land  and  water  conveyances.  When  the  machine 
was  finished,  he  fixed,  in  a  rough  and  temporary 
manner,  wheels  with  wooden  axletrees,  and,  of 
course,  under  the  influence  of  great  friction.  Al- 
though the  whole  weight  was  equal  to  two  hundred 
barrels  of  flour,  yet  his  small  engine  propelled  it  up 
Market  Street  and  round  the  circle  to  the  water- 
works, where  it  was  launched  into  the  Schuylkill 
River.  A  paddle-wheel  was  then  applied  to  its  stern, 
and  it  thus  moved  down  that  river  to  the  Delaware, 
a  distance  of  sixteen  miles,  leaving  behind  all  vessels 
that  were  under  sail. 

This  demonstration  was  in  the  presence  of  thou- 
sands of  spectators,  which  he  supposed  would  have 
convinced  them  of  the  practicability  of  steamboats 
42 


PIONEER  INVENTORS 

and  steam  carriages.  But  no  allowance  was  made 
by  the  public  for  the  disproportion  of  the  engine  to 
its  load,  nor  for  the  rough  manner  in  which  the 
machinery  was  fixed,  or  the  great  friction  and  ill 
form  of  the  boat,  and  it  was  supposed  that  this  was 
the  utmost  it  could  perform.  Some  individuals  un- 
dertook to  ridicule  the  experiment  of  driving  so  great 
a  weight  on  land,  because  the  motion  was  too  slow 
to  be  useful.  The  inventor  silenced  them  by  answer- 
ing that  he  would  make  a  carriage  propelled  by 
steam,  for  a  wager  of  three  thousand  dollars,  to  run 
upon  a  level  road,  against  the  swiftest  horse  that 
could  be  produced.  This  machine  Evans  named  the 
Oructor  Amphibolis. 

On  the  25th  of  September,  1804,  Evans  submitted 
to  the  consideration  o>f  the  Lancaster  Turnpike  Com- 
pany a  statement  of  the  costs  and  profits  of  a  steam 
carriage  to  carry  one  hundred  barrels  of  flour,  fifty 
miles  in  twenty- four  hours ;  tending  to  show  that  one 
such  steam  carriage  would  make  more  net  profits 
than  ten  wragons,  drawn  by  five  horses  each,  on  a 
good  turnpike  road,  and  offering  to  build  one  at  a 
very  low  price.  His  address  closed  as  follows :  "It 
is  too  much  for  an  individual  to  put  in  operation 
every  improvement  which  he  may  invent.  I  have  no 
doubt  but  that  my  engines  will  propel  boats  against 
the  current  of  the  Mississippi,  and  wagons  on  turn- 
pike roads,  with  great  profit.  I  now  call  upon  those 
whose  interest  it  is  to  carry  this  invention  into'  ef- 
fect. All  of  which  is  respectfully  submitted  to  your 
consideration."  Little  or  no  attention  was  paid  to 
this  offer,  for  it  was  difficult  at  that  day  to  interest 
anyone  in  steam  locomotion. 

43 


AUTOMOBILE    BIOGRAPHIES 

Evans'  interest  in  the  steam  carriage  forthwith 
ceased,  but  in  his  writings,  published  about  that  time, 
he  remarked :  "The  time  will  come  when  people 
will  travel  in  stages  moved  by  steam  engines  from 
one  city  to  another,  almost  as  fast  as  birds  fly,  fifteen 
or  twenty  miles  an  hour.  Passing  through  the  air 
with  such  velocity,  changing  the  scene  in  such  rapid 
succession,  will  be  the  most  rapid  exhilarating  exer- 
cise. A  carriage  (steam)  will  set  out  from  Wash- 
ington in  the  morning,  the  passengers  will  breakfast 
at  Baltimore,  dine  at  Philadelphia,  and  sup  at  New 
York  in  the  same  day.''7  To  accomplish  this  he  sug- 
gested railways  of  wood  or  iron,  or  smooth  paths  of 
broken  stone  or  gravel,  and  predicted  that  engines 
would  soon  drive  boats  ten  or  twelve  miles  an  hour. 
In  the  latter  years  of  his  life,  Evans  established  a 
large  iron  foundry  in  Philadelphia. 

Although  Evans'  distinct  contribution  to  the 
problem  of  steam  locomotion  on  the  common  roads 
was  not  particularly  practical  it  w^as  at  least  im- 
portant as  being  the  first  suggestion  of  anything  of 
the  kind  in  the  United  States.  Road  conditions  in 
this  country  at  that  time  were  worse  than  they  were 
in  England  and  yet  under  more  discouraging  cir- 
cumstances he  was  as  far  advanced  in  ideas  and  plans 
as  his  great  contemporaries,  Trevithick  and  others 
across  the  water.  To  Evans  must  be  given  the  credit 
of  perfecting  the  high-pressure,  non-condensing 
engine,  and  even  Trevithick,  "the  father  of  the  loco- 
motive," was  largely  indebted  to  him  for  his  progress 
in  the  lines  he  was  working  on  in  England,  his  plans 
and  specifications  having  been  sent  abroad  for  the 
English  engineers  to  inspect  in  1784. 
44 


PIONEER  INVENTORS 

WILLIAM  SYMINGTON 

Born  at  Leadhills,  Scotland,  October,  1783.  Died 
in  London,  March  22,  1831. 

More  fortunate  than  most  of  the  English  invent- 
ors of  the  seventeenth  and  eighteenth  centuries,  with 
whom  he  was  associated,  William  Symington  came 
of  a  family  that  was  able  to  give  him  a  good  educa- 
tion. His  father  was  a  mechanic  who  had  charge 
of  the  engines  and  machinery  at  the  Warlockhead 
lead  mines,  and  the  son  gained  his  first  knowledge 
of  mechanics  and  engineering  in  the  shops  with  his 
father.  Intended  for  the  ministry,  he  was  sent  to 
the  University  of  Glasgow  and  the  University  of 
Dublin  to  pursue  his  studies.  But  the  ministry  had 
slight  attractions  for  him,  and  when  the  time  came 
for  him  to  choose  a  profession,  he  adopted  that  of 
civil  engineering. 

In  1786  he  worked  out  a  model  for  a  steam  road- 
car.  This  was  regarded  very  highly  by  all  who  saw 
it.  It  is  said  that  Mr.  Meason,  manager  of  the  lead 
mines  at  Warlockhead,  was  so  pleased  with  the 
model,  the  merit  of  which  principally  belonged  to 
young  Symington,  that  he  sent  him  into  Edinburgh 
for  the  purpose  of  exhibiting  it  before  the  professors 
of  the  University,  and  other  scientific  gentlemen  of 
the  city,  in  the  hope  that  it  might  lead  in  some  way  to 
his  future  advancement  in  life.  Mr.  Meason  became 
the  patron  and  friend  of  Symington,  allowed  the 
model  to  be  exhibited  at  his  own  house,  and  invited 
many  persons  of  distinction  to  inspect  it.  The  car- 
riage supported  on  four  wheels  had  a  locomotive  be- 
hind, the  front  wheels  being  arranged  with 
steering-gear.  A  cylindrical  boiler  was  used 
45 


AUTOMOBILE    BIOGRAPHIES 

for  generating  steam,  which  communicated  by 
a  steam-pipe  with  the  two  horizontal  cylinders, 
one  on  each  side  of  the  firebox  of  the  boiler. 
When  steam  was  turned  into  the  cylinder, 
the  piston  made  an  outward  stroke;  a  vacuum 
was  then  formed,  the  steam  being  condensed  in  a  cold 
water  tank  placed  beneath  the  cylinders,  and  the  pis- 
ton was  forced  back  by  the  pressure  of  the  atmos- 
phere. The  piston  rods  communicated  their  motion 
to  the  driving-axle  and  wheels  through  rack  rods, 
which  worked  toothed  wheels  placed  on  the  hind 
axle  on  both  sides  of  the  engine,  and  the  alternate 
action  of  the  rack  rods  upon  the  tooth  and  ratchet 
wheels,  with  which  the  drums  were  provided,  pro- 
duced the  rotary  motion.  The  boiler  was  fitted  with 
a  lever  and  weight  safety  valve.  Symington's  loco- 
motive was  abandoned,  the  inventor  considering  that 
the  scheme  of  steam  travel  on  the  common  roads 
was  impracticable. 

Henceforth,  Symington  gave  his  attention  to  the 
study  of  boat  propulsion  by  steam.  In  1787  he  got 
out  a  patent  for  an  improved  form  of  steam  engine, 
in  which  he  obtained  rotary  action  by  chains  and 
ratchet-wheels.  This  engine,  with  a  four-inch  cyl- 
inder, was  used  to  work  the  paddles  of  a  pleasure 
boat  on  Dais  win  ton  Loch,  in  1788,  the  boat  steam- 
ing at  the  rate  of  five  miles  an  hour.  This  boat  is 
now  in  the  South  Kensington  Museum,  and  it  has 
been  termed  "the  parent  engine  of  steam  naviga- 
tion." The  experiment  with  this  method  of  boat 
propulsion  was  so  successful  that  a  year  later  larger 
engines,  with  eighteen-inch  cylinders,  were  fitted  to 
another  boat,  which  attained  a  speed  of  seven  miles 
46 


PIONEER  INVENTORS 

an  hour.  In  1801,  Symington  took  out  a  patent  for 
an  engine  with  a  piston  rod  guided  by  rollers  in  a 
straight  path  and  connected  by  a  rod  with  a  crank 
attached  directly  to  the  paddle-wheel  shaft — the  sys- 
tem that  has  been  in  use  ever  since.  Although  the 
perfect  practicability  of  this  method  of  boat  propul- 
sion was  fully  demonstrated  by  a  trial  on  the  tug- 
boat Charlotte  Dundas,  in  March,  1802,  the  plan 
for  steam  power  on  canals  and  lakes  was  not  carried 
further.  The  Forth  and  Clyde  Company,  and  the 
Duke  of  Bridgewater,  who  were  backing  Symington, 
gave  up  the  project  and  he  could  get  help  from  no< 
other  sources.  His  inventions  and  experiments  are 
generally  regarded  as  marking  the  beginning  of 
steam  navigation.  It  is  interesting  to  note  that 
among  those  who  were  guests  on  the  Charlotte  Dun- 
das,  on  the  occasion  of  this  trial  trip,  was  Robert 
Fulton,  who  wrote  a  treatise  on  steam  navigation  in 
1793,  tried  a  small  steamboat  on  the  river  Seine,  in 
France,  in  1803,  and  in  1807  launched  his  famous 
steamship,  the  Clermont,  on  the  Hudson  River. 

Symington,  disappointed  and  discouraged,  gave 
up  his  work  and  went  to>  London.  The  rest  of  his 
life  was  for  the  most  part  thrown  away,  and  he  be- 
came one  of  the  waifs  and  strays  of  London.  In 
1825  he  received  a  grant  of  one  hundred  pounds 
from  the  privy  purse,  and  later  on  fifty  pounds  more, 
in  recognition  of  his  services  for  steam  navigation. 
He  died  in  obscurity  and  although  he  was  unques- 
tionably the  pioneer  in  his  country  of  the  successful 
application  of  steam  to  navigation  on  inland  waters 
his  name  is  only  a  bare  memory. 


47 


AUTOMOBILE  BIOGRAPHIES 

NATHAN  READ 

Born  in  Warren,  Mass.,  July  2,  1759.  Died  near 
Belfast,  Me.,  January  20,  1849. 

Graduated  from  Harvard  College  in  1781,  Read 
was  a  tutor  at  Harvard  for  four  years.  In  1788  he 
began  experimenting  to  discover  some  way  of  utiliz- 
ing the  steam  engine  for  propelling  boats  and  car- 
riages. His  efforts  were  mainly  directed  toward  de- 
vising lighter,  more  compact  machinery  than  then 
generally  in  use.  His  greatest  invention  at  that  time 
was  a  substitute  for  the  large  working-beam.  This 
was  a  cross-head  beam  which  ran  in  guides  and  had 
a  connecting-rod  with  which  motion  was  communi- 
cated. The  new  cylinder  that  he  invented  to  attach 
to  this  working-frame  was  double-acting.  In  order 
to  make  the  boiler  more  portable  he  invented  a  multi- 
tubular  form,  and  this  he  patented,  together  with  the 
cylinder,  chain-wheel,  and  other  appliances. 

The  boiler  was  cylindrical  and  was  placed  upright 
or  horizontal,  and  the  furnace  was  carried  within  it. 
A  double  cylinder  formed  a  water-jacket,  connected 
with  a  water  and  steam  chamber  above,  and  a  water- 
chamber  below.  Numerous  small  straight  tubes 
connected  these  two  chambers.  Read  also  invented 
another  boiler  in  which  the  fire  went  through  small 
spiral  tubes,  very  much  as  it  does  in  the  present- 
day  locomotives,  and  this  was  a  smoke-consuming 
engine.  For  the  purpose  of  acquiring  motion  he  first 
used  paddle-wheels,  but  afterward  adopted  a  chain- 
wheel  of  his  own  invention. 

Read  planned  a  steam-car  to  be  run  with  his  tubu- 
lar boiler,  and  it  is  said  that  this  vehicle,  when  laden 
with  fifty  tons  weight,  could  make  five  miles  per 


NATHAN  READ 


PIONEER  INVENTORS 

.*• 

hour.  The  model  which  was  completed  in  1790  had 
four  wheels,  the  front  pair  being  pivoted  at  the  center 
and  controlled  by  a  horizontal  sheave  and  rope.  The 
sheave  was  located  back  near  the  boiler,  and  in  guid- 
ing the  machine  it  was  operated  by  a  hand-wheel 
placed  above  the  platform,  within  easy  reach  of  the 
engineer.  A  square  boiler  with  Read's  multi-tubular 
system,  overhung  at  the  rear  of  the  carriage.  Two 
driving-wheels  w-ere  forward  of  the  boiler,  and  in 
front  of  these  were  two  horizontal  cylinders  on  each 
side  of  the  engine.  On  the  inside  of  each  wdieel  were 
ratched  teeth  that  fitted  into  corresponding  teeth  on 
horizontal  racks  above  and  below  the  hub.  The  pis- 
ton, moving  back  and  forth  from  the  cylinder,  en- 
gaged these  teeth  and  caused  a  revolution  of  the 
wheel.  There  were  two  steam  valves  and  two*  ex- 
haust valves  to  each  cylinder,  the  exhaust  being  into 
the  atmosphere.  Although  this  was  the  first  concep- 
tion of  propulsion  by  steam  on  land  in  America,  Read 
went  no  further  in  creating  this  model,  inasmuch  as 
he  received  no  encouragement  from  financial  sources. 
In  1796,  Read  established  at  Salem,  Mass.,  the 
Salem  Iron  Foundry,  where  he  manufactured  an- 
chors, chain  cables,  and  other  machinery.  In  Jan- 
uary, 1798,  he  invented  a  machine  to  cut  and  head 
nails  at  one  operation.  He  also  invented  a  method 
of  equalizing  the  action  of  windmills  by  accumulat- 
ing the  force  of  the  wind  through  winding  up  a 
weight;-  and  a  plan  for  harnessing  the  force  of  the 
tides  by  means  of  reservoirs  which,  by  being  alter- 
nately filled  up  and  emptied,  created  a  constant 
stream  of  water.  Among  his  other  inventions  were 
a  pumping  engine  and  a  threshing  machine. 
49 


AUTOMOBILE  BIOGRAPHIES 

RICHARD  TREVITHICK 

Born  in  Illo-gan,  in  the  west  of  Cornwall,  England, 
April  13,  1771.  Died  in  Dartford,  Kent,  April  22, 

1833- 

Richard  Trevithick  had  meager  educational  ad- 
vantages. His  father  was  manager  of  the  Dolcoath 
and  other  mines,  and  shortly  after  the  birth  of  his 
son  moved  to  Penponds,  near  Camborne,  where  the 
boy  was  sent  to  school  to  learn  reading,  writing  and 
arithmetic,  which  were  the  limits  of  his  attainments. 
Early  in  life  he  showed  the  dawning  of  remarkable 
inventive  genius,  was  quick  at  figures  and  clever  in 
drawing.  He  developed  into  a  young  man  of  nota- 
ble physique,  being  six  feet  two  inches  high,  and  hav- 
ing the  frame  and  the  strength  of  an  athlete.  He 
was  one  of  the  most  powerful  wrestlers  in  the  west 
country,  and  it  is  related  o<f  him  that  he  could  easily 
lift  a  thousand-weight  mandril. 

At  the  age  of  eighteen  young  Trevithick  began  to 
assist  his  father  as  mine  manager,  and  at  once  pro- 
ceeded to*  put  his  inventive  faculty  to  practical  test. 
His  initial  success,  in  1795,  was  an  improvement 
upon  an  engine  at  the  Wheal  Treasury  mine,  which 
accomplished  a  great  saving  in  fuel  and  in  power, 
and  won  for  him  his  first  royalty.  Before  his  father 
died,  in  1797,  he  had  attained  to  the  position  of  en- 
gineer at  the  Ding  Dong  mine,  near  Penzance,  and 
had  already  set  up  at  the  Herlancl  mine  the  engine 
built  by  William  Bull,  with  improvements  of  his 
owrn.  His  earliest  invention  of  importance  was  in 
1797,  when  he  made  an  improved  plunger  pump, 
which,  in  the  following  year,  he  developed  into  a 
double-acting  water-pressure  engine.  One  of  these 
50 


RICHARD  TREVITHICK 


PIONEER  INVENTORS 

engines,  set  up  in  1804,  at  the  Alport  mine,  in  Derby- 
shire, was  run  until  1850. 

In  1780  he  built  a  double-acting  high-pressure  en- 
gine with  a  crank,  for  Cook's  Kitchen  mine.  This 
was  known  as  the  Puffer,  from  the  noise  that  it 
made,  and  it  soon  came  into  general  use  in  Cornwall 
and  South  Wales,  a  successful  rival  of  the  low- 
pressure  steam  vacuum  engine  of  Watt. 

As  early  as  1796  Trevithick  began  to  give  atten- 
tion to  the  subject  of  steam  locomotion,  and  a  model 
constructed  by  him  before  1800  is  now  in  the  South 
Kensington  Museum.  He  busied  himself  in  design- 
ing and  building  a  steam  vehicle  to  travel  upon  the 
common  highways.  The  work  was  done  in  a  work- 
shop at  Camborne,  and  some  of  it  in  the  shop  of 
Captain  Andrew  Vivian.  It  was  Christmas  Eve  of 
1 80 1  when  this  steam  locomotive  was  completed  and 
was  brought  out  for  trial. 

The  following  account  of  the  first  trial  was  made 
by  one  who  was  present :  "I  knew  Captain  Dick 
Trevithick  very  well.  I  was  a  cooper  by  trade,  and 
when  Trevithick  was  making  his  steam  carriage  I 
used  to  go  every  day  into  John  Tyack's  shop  at  the 
Weith,  close  by  here,  where  they  put  her  together. 
In  the  year  1801,  upon  Christmas  Eve,  towards 
night,  Trevithick  got  up  steam,  out  on  the  high  road, 
just  outside  the  shop.  When  we  saw  that  Trevi- 
thick was  going  to  turn  on  steam,  we  jumped  up,  as 
many  as  could,  maybe  seven  or  eight  of  us.  'Twas 
a  stiffish  hill  going  up  to  Camborne  Beacon,  but  she 
went  off  like  a  little  bird.  When  she  had  gone  about 
a  quarter  of  a  mile  there  was  a  rough  piece  of  road 
covered  with  loose  stones.  She  didn't  go  quite  so 


AUTOMOBILE    BIOGRAPHIES 

fast,  and  as  it  was  a  Hood  of  rain,  and  we  were  very 
much  squeezed  together,  I  jumped  off.  She  was  go- 
ing faster  than  I  could  walk,  and  went  up  the  hill 
about  half  a  mile  further,  when  they  turned  her  and 
came  back  again  to  the  shop."  The  next  day  the 
engine  steamed  to  Captain  Vivian's  house,  and  a  few 
days  subsequently,  Trevithick  and  Vivian  started  off 
for  Tehidy  House,  where  Lord  Dedunstanville  lived, 
some  two  or  three  miles  from  Camborne.  On  this 
journey  they  met  with  an  accident,  the  engine  being 
overturned  in  going  around  a  curve;  but  they  got 
back  safely. 

This  carriage  presented  the  appearance  of  an  or- 
dinary stage  coach  on  four  wheels.  The  engine  had 
one  horizontal  cylinder  which,  together  with  the 
boiler  and  the  furnace-box,  was  placed  in  the  rear  of 
the  hind  axle.  The  motion  of  the  piston  was  trans- 
mitted to  a  separate  crank-axle,  from  which,  through 
the  medium  of  spur-gear,  the  axle  of  the  driving- 
wheel,  which  was  mounted  with  a  fly-wheel,  de- 
rived its  motion.  The  steam  cocks  and  the  force- 
pump,  as  also  the  bellows  used  for  the  purpose  of 
quickening  combustion  in  the  furnace,  were  worked 
off  the  same  crank  axle.  This  was  one  of  the  first 
successful  high-pressure  engines  constructed  on  the 
principle  of  moving  a  piston  by  the  elasticity  of  steam 
against  the  pressure  only  of  the  outside  atmosphere. 

In  the  following  year  Trevithick  went  to  London 
with  his  cousin,  Andrew  Vivian,  and  secured  a  pat- 
ent. Early  in  1803  he  made  his  second  steam  car- 
riage. This  was  built  at  Camborne  and  taken  to 
London,  via  Plymouth,  for  exhibition.  Its  journey 
along  the  highways  thoroughly  alarmed  the  country 


PIONEER  INVENTORS 

people.  Coleridge  relates  that  a  toll-gate  keeper  was 
so  frightened  at  the  appearance  of  the  sputtering, 
smoke-spitting  thing  of  fearsome  mien  that,  trem- 
bling in  every  limb  and  with  teeth  chattering,  he 
threw  aside  the  toll-gate  with  the  scared  exclamation, 
"No — noth — nothing  to  pay.  My  de — dear  Mr. 
Devil,  do  drive  on  as  fast  as  you  can.  Nothing  to 
pay!" 

The  engine  in  this  carriage  had  a  cylinder  five  and 
one-half  inches  in  diameter,  with  a  stroke  of  two  and 
one-half  feet,  and  with  thirty  pounds  of  steam  it 
worked  five  strokes  per  minute.  In  every  way  it 
was  superior  to  its  predecessor.  It  was  not  so  heavy ; 
and  the  horizontal  cylinder,  instead  of  the  vertical, 
added  very  much  to  its  steadiness  of  motion;  while 
wheels  of  a  larger  diameter  enabled  it  the  more  easily 
to  pass  over  rough  roads  which  had  brought  the 
Camborne  one  to  a  standstill.  The  boiler  was  made 
entirely  of  wrought  iron,  and  the  cylinder  was  in- 
serted horizontally,  close  behind  the  driving  axle, 
A  forked  piston-rod  was  used,  the  ends  working  in 
guides,  so  that  the  crank  axle  might  be  brought  near 
to  the  cylinder.  Spur  gearing  and  couplings  were 
used  on  each  side  of  the  carriage  for  communicating 
motion  from  the  crank  shaft  to  the  main  driving 
axle.  The  driving-wheels  were  about  ten  feet  diam- 
eter, and  made  of  wood.  The  framing  was  of 
wrought  iron.  The  coach  was  intended  to  seat  eight 
or  ten  persons,  and  the  greater  part  of  the  weight 
came  on  the  driving  axle.  The  coach  was  suspended 
upon  springs. 

The  London  steam  carriage  was  put  together  at 
Felton's  carriage  shop,  in  Leather  Lane,  and  after  its 
53 


AUTOMOBILE    BIOGRAPHIES 

completion,  Vivian  one  day  ran  the  locomotive  from 
Leather  Lane,  Gray's  Inn  Lane,  on  to  Lords'  Cricket 
Ground,  to  Paddington,  and  home  again  by  way  of 
Islington,  a  journey  of  ten  miles  through  the  streets 
of  London.  Several  trips  were  made  in  Tottenham 
Court  Road  and  Euston  Square,  and  only  once  did 
they  meet  with  accident.  Finally,  however,  the 
frame  of  the  carriage  got  twisted,  and  the  engine 
was  detached  and  set  to  driving  a  mill. 

Trevithick's  next  experiment  was  made  in  1803-4, 
while  he  was  engineer  of  the  Pen-y-darran  iron 
works,  near  Merthyr  Tydvil,  where  he  built  and  ran 
on  a  railway  a  locomotive  that  was  fairly  successful. 
In  1808  he  built  a  locomotive  for  a  circular  railway 
or  steam  circus  that  he  and  Andrew  Vivian  set  up  in 
London,  near  Euston  Square.  This  ran  for  several 
weeks,  carrying  passengers  at  the  rate  of  twelve  or 
fifteen  miles  an  hour  around  curves  of  fifty  or  one 
hundred  feet  radius.  One  day  a  rail  broke  and  the 
engine  was  overturned,  which  ended  the  exhibition. 

Subsequently, Trevithick  applied  his  high-pressure 
engine  to  rock-boring  and  breaking,  and  dredging. 
He  laid  out  a  system  of  dredging  the  Thames  River, 
planned  a  tunnel  under  the  Thames,  invented  a  high- 
pressure  steam  threshing  engine  in  1812,  constructed 
iron  tanks  and  buoys,  and  modeled  an  iron  ship.  He 
was  one  of  the  first  to  conceive  the  practical  use  of 
steam  in  agriculture,  declaring  that  the  use  of  the 
steam  engine  for  this  purpose  would  "double  the 
population  of  the  kingdom  and  make  our  markets  the 
cheapest  in  the  world." 

In  1814,  Trevithick  became  interested  in  a  plan 
to  work  the  silver  mines  of  Peru  by  Cornish  meth- 
54 


PIONEER  INVENTORS 

ods,  and  nine  of  his  high-pressure  engines  were  sent 
to  South  America  in  charge  of  Henry  Vivian  and 
other  engineers.  He  himself  followed  in  1816,  and 
remained  in  that  country  ten  years,  making  and  los- 
ing several  fortunes  during  that  time.  Finally,  in  a 
revolution,  the  mining  plants  were  destroyed,  and  he 
was  forced  to  leave  the  country,  penniless.  For  a 
time  he  was  prospecting  in  Costa  Rica,  where  he 
planned  a  railroad  across  the  Isthmus  from  the  At- 
lantic to  the  Pacific.  In  1827  he  returned  to  Eng- 
land, still  a  poor  man,  and  settling  in  Dartford,  Kent, 
devoted  himself  to  new  inventions,  unsuccessfully  en- 
deavoring to  secure  the  help  of  the  government  in 
his  work.  His  later  years  were  spent  in  poverty, 
and  when  he  died,  the  expense  of  his  burial  was 
borne  by  his  fellow-workmen  of  Dartford. 

Undoubtedly,  Trevi thick  was  one  of  the  foremost 
English  engineers  of  his  clay,  a  period  that  was  rich 
with  strong  men  of  distinction  in  his  profession.  By 
many  he  has  been  considered  as  having  contributed 
more  even  than  James  Watt  to  the  development  of 
the  steam  engine  and  its  broader  adaptation  to  prac- 
tical uses.  In  his  early  years  he  was  restrained  in 
putting  his  ideas  and  experiments  to  practical  test  by 
the  restrictions  of  Watt's  patents.  Finally  when  that 
difficulty  was  removed  he  at  once  took  a  leading  posi- 
tion in  his  profession.  Especially  in  the  development 
of  the  high  pressure  engine  he  is  entitled  to  at  least 
as  much  credit  as  any  man  of  his  day.  His  genius 
was  fully  recognized  in  his  generation  and  his  impov- 
erished old  age  was  the  result  of  financial  reverses  in 
business  operations  and  not  from  the  lack  of  substan- 
tial rewards  for  his  inventive  achievements. 
55 


AUTOMOBILE  BIOGRAPHIES 

DAVID  GORDON 

The  first  experiments  of  David  Gordon,  who  in 
1819  was  working  with  William  Murdock,  in  Soho, 
were  for  the  purpose  of  using  compressed  air  for  com- 
mon road  locomotives.  He  also  invented  a  portable 
gas  apparatus,  and  originated  a  society  of  gentlemen, 
with  the  intention  of  forming  a  company  for  the  pur- 
pose of  running  a  mail  coach  and  other  carriages  by 
means  of  a  high-pressure  engine,  or  of  a  gas  vacuum 
or  pneumatic  engine,  supplied  with  portable  gas. 
Alexander  Gordon,  his  son,  states  that  "the  commit- 
tee of  the  society  had  only  a  limited  sum  at  their  dis- 
posal, nor  were  there  to  be  more  funds  until  a  car- 
riage had  been  propelled  for  a  considerable  distance 
at  the  rate  of  ten  miles  an  hour."  David  Gordon 
then  tried  to  prevail  upon  the  committee  to  make  use 
of  a  steam  engine,  but  evidently  without  success. 

In  1821  he  took  out  a  patent  for  improvements  in 
wheel  carriages,  and  his  locomotive  is  fully  described 
in  the  interesting  Treatise  on  Elemental  Locomotion, 
by  Mr.  Alexander  Gordon.  The  machine  consisted 
of  a  large  hollow  cylinder  about  nine  feet  in  diam- 
eter and  five  long,  having  its  internal  circumference 
provided  with  a  continuous  series  of  cogged  teeth, 
into  which  were  made  to'  work  the  cogged  running 
wheels  of  a  locomotive  steam  engine,  similar  to  that 
of  Trevithick.  The  steam  power  being  communi- 
cated to  the  wheels  of  the  carriage,  caused  them  to' 
revolve,  and  to  climb  up  the  internal  rack  of  the  large 
cylinder.  The  center  of  gravity  of  the  engine  being 
thus  constantly  made  to  change  its  position,  and  to 
throw  its  chief  weight  on  the  forward  side  of  the 
axis  of  the  cylinder,  the  latter  was  compelled  to  roll 

56 


PIONEER  INVENTORS 

forward,  propelling  the  vehicle  before  it,  and  what- 
ever train  might  be  added. 

Gordon's  next  attempt  to  construct  locomotive 
carriages  for  the  common  road  was  in  1824.  The 
means  proposed  was  a  modification  of  the  method 
invented  by  William  Brunton.  But  instead  of  the 
propellers  being  operated  upon  by  the  alternating 
motion  of  the  piston-rod,  as  in  Brunton's  vehicle, 
Gordon  contrived  to  give  them  a  continuous  rotatory 
action  and  to  apply  the  force  of  the  engines  in  a  more 
direct  manner.  The  carriage  ran  upon  three  wheels, 
one  in  the  front  to  steer  by,  and  two  behind  to  bear 
the  chief  weight.  Each  o<f  the  wheels  had  a  sepa- 
rate axle,  the  ends  of  which  had  their  bearings  upon 
parallel  bars,  the  wheels  rolling  in  a  perpendicular 
position.  This  arrangement,  by  avoiding  the  usual 
cross-axle,  afforded  an  increased  uninterrupted  space 
in  the  body  of  the  vehicle. 

In  the  fore  part  of  the  carriage  were  placed  the 
steam  engines,  consisting  of  two  brass  cylinders,  in  a 
horizontal  position,  but  vibrating  upon  trunnions. 
The  piston-rods  of  these  engines  gave  motion  to  an 
eight-throw  crank,  two  in  the  middle  for  the  cylin- 
ders, and  three  on  each  side,  to  which  were  attached 
the  propellers;  by  the  revolution  of  the  crank,  these 
propellers  or  legs  were  successively  forced  outwards, 
with  the  feet  of  each  against  the  ground  in  a  back- 
ward direction,  and  were  immediately  afterwards 
lifted  from  the  ground  by  the  revolution  of  another 
crank,  parallel  to  the  former,  and  situated  at  a  proper 
distance  from  it  on  the  same  frame.  The  propelling- 
rods  were  formed  of  iron  gas-tubes,  filled  with  wood, 
to  combine  lightness  with  strength.  To  the  lower 
57 


AUTOMOBILE   BIOGRAPHIES 

ends  of  these  propelling-rods  were  attached  the  feet, 
in  the  form  of  segments  of  circles,  and  made  on  their 
under  side  like  a  short  and  very  stiff  brush  of  whale- 
bone, supported  by  intermixed  iron  teeth,  to  take 
effect  in  case  the  whalebone  failed.  These  feet 
pressed  against  the  ground  in  regular  succession,  by 
a  kind  of  rolling,  circular  motion,  without  digging  it 
up.  The  guide  had  the  power  of  lifting  these  legs 
off  the  ground  at  pleasure,  so  that  in  going  down 
hill,  when  the  gravity  was  sufficient  for  propulsion, 
nothing  but  a  brake  was  put  into  requisition  to  re- 
tard the  motion,  if  necessary.  If  the  carriage  was 
proceeding  upon  a  level,  the  lifting  of  the  propellers 
was  equivalent  to  the  subtraction  of  the  power,  and 
soon  brought  it  to  a  full  stop.  When  making  turns 
in  a  road  the  guide  had  only  to  lift  the  propellers  on 
one  side  of  the  carriage  and  allow  the  others  to  ope- 
rate alone,  until  the  curve  was  traversed. 

Gordon  got  fair  results  from  this  locomotive,  but 
the  speed  was  not  satisfactory.  In  his  first  trials  he 
found  the  power  insufficient.  He  afterwards  fitted 
one  of  Gurney's  light  boilers  in  the  hinder  part  O'f 
the  carriage,  though  even  after  this  improvement 
had  been  added  the  experiments  were  disappointing. 
Gordon  wTas  convinced  that  the  application  of  the 
power  to  the  wheels  was  the  proper  mode  of  propul- 
sion, and  his  project  was  abandoned  after  six  or 
seven  years  had  been  spent  in  inventing,  construct- 
ing, and  carrying  out  experiments  with  four  distinct 
carriages. 


If  Iffi 

li»,;  .  </..•.  I      ''.  . !  ,    : 


PIONEER  INVENTORS 

WILLIAM  HENRY  JAMES 

Born  at  Henley,  England,  March,  1776.  Died  at 
Dulwich  College  Alms  House,  December  16,  1873. 

The  father  of  William  Henry  James  was  William 
James,  of  Warwickshire,  the  great  railway  projector 
of  his  time.  He  was  a  solicitor  in  early  life,  but  be- 
came wealthy,  worked  a  colliery  in  South  Stafford- 
shire, and  in  1815  removed  to  London,  where  he  had 
a  large  land  agency  business.  He  became  interested 
in  tramways  in  1806,  and  from  that  date  on  devoted 
most  of  his  energies  and  fortune  to  projecting  rail- 
ways in  the  United  Kingdom.  He  had  an  interest  in 
one  of  George  Stephenson's  patents,  made  numerous 
railway  surveys,  and  by  many  has  been  considered 
to  have  done  more  than  any  single  individual  in  lay- 
ing the  foundations  of  the  English  railroad  system. 

William  Henry  James  assisted  his  father  in  his 
railway  surveys  in  early  life,  and  then  began  business 
independently  as  an  engineer,  in  Birmingham.  He 
made  experiments  in  steam  locomotion  on  common 
roads,  and  took  out  patents  for  locomotive  steam  en- 
gines, boilers,  driving  apparatus,  and  so  on.  His 
patent  for  a  water-tube  boiler  for  road  locomotives 
was  secured  in  1823,  and  his  first  car  was  built  in 
1824.  This  was  a  twenty-passenger  steam  coach. 
Each  rear  wheel  had  a  double-cylinder  engine,  and 
the  pistons  were  worked  at  a  pressure  of  two  hun- 
dred pounds  per  square  inch.  Separate  engines  to 
each  driver  gave  each  wheel  an  independent  motion, 
so  that  power  and  speed  might  be  varied  for  turning 
corners,  the  outer  wheel  travelling  over  a  much 
greater  space  than  the  inner  wheel.  When  the  front 
wheels  were  so  placed  that  the  carriage  proceeded 
59 


AUTOMOBILE    BIOGRAPHIES 

in  a  straight  line  an  equal  amount  of  steam  was  ad- 
mitted to  each  pair  of  cylinders,  but  when  the  front 
wheel  was  in  the  lock  the  engine  driving  the  outer 
wheel  received  a  greater  amount  of  steam  and  thus 
developed  more  power  and  traveled  faster  than  the 
inner  wheel.  This  arrangement  was  said  to  be  so 
efficient  that  the  carriage  could  be  made  to  describe 
every  variety  of  curve,  repeatedly  making  turns  of 
less  than  ten  feet  radius.  The  whole  of  the  machinery 
was  mounted  upon  laminated  carriage  springs.  This 
arrangement  caused  the  engines  and  their  frame- 
work to  vibrate  altogether  upon  the  crank-shaft  as 
a  center,  at  the  same  time  connecting  these  engines 
to  the  boiler  by  means  of  hollow  axles  moving  in 
stuffing  boxes.  Each  engine  had  two  cylinders  of 
small  diameter  and  long  stroke ;  to  these  separate  en- 
gines steam  was  supplied  from  the  boiler  by  means 
of  the  main  pipe,  which  moved  through  steam-tight 
stuffing  boxes  to>  the  slide  valve-boxes  by  small  pipes. 
The  locomotive  was  entirely  distinct  from  the 
passenger  carriage. 

Sir  James  C.  Anderson  became  associated  with 
James,  and  in  1829  they  built  another  carriage.  This 
weighed  nearly  three  tons,  and  the  first  trials  were 
made  round  a  circle  of  one  hundred  and  sixty  feet 
in  diameter.  When  it  was  finally  ready  to  be  brought 
out  it  was  loaded  with  fifteen  passengers  and  driven 
several  miles  on  a  rough  gravel  road  across  Epping 
Forest,  with  a  speed  varying  from  twelve  to  fifteen 
miles  an  hour.  Steam  was  supplied  by  two  tubular 
boilers,  each  forming  a  hollow  cylinder  four  feet  six 
inches  long.  The  tubes  of  which  the  boilers  were 
composed  were  common  gas  pipe,  one  of  which  split 
60 


PIONEER  INVENTORS 

on  one  of  the  trips,  thus  letting  the  water  out  of  one 
of  the  boilers  and  extinguishing  its  fire.  Under 
these  circumstances,  with  only  one  boiler  in  opera- 
tion, the  carriage  returned  home  at  the  rate  of  about 
seven  miles  an  hour,  carrying  more  than  twenty  pas- 
sengers— at  one  period,  indeed,  it  is  said,  a  much 
greater  number;  showing  that  sufficient  steam  could 
be  generated  in  such  a  boiler  to  be  equal  to  the  pro- 
pulsion of  between  five  and  six  tons  weight.  In 
consequence  of  this  demonstration  that  the  most 
brilliant  success  was  attainable,  the  proprietors  dis- 
mantled the  carriage  and  commenced  the  construc- 
tion of  superior  tubular  boilers  with  much  stronger 
tubes. 

Shortly  after  Anderson  and  James  commenced  to 
build  another  steam  carriage,  which  was  ready  for 
use  in  November,  1829.  This  engine  was  not  in- 
tended to  carry  passengers,  but  to*  be  employed  for 
drawing  carriages  behind.  Four  tubular  boilers 
were  used,  the  total  number  of  tubes  being  nearly 
two  hundred.  These  boilers  were  enclosed  in  a  space 
four  feet  wide,  three  feet  long,  and  twro  feet  deep. 
The  steam  from  each  boiler  was  conducted  into  one 
main  steam  pipe  one  and  one-half  inches  in  diam- 
eter, and  the  communication  from  any  one  of  the 
boilers  could  be  cut  off  in  case  of  leakage.  Four 
cylinders,  each  two  and  one-quarter  inch  bore  and 
nine  inch  stroke,  were  arranged  vertically  in  the  hind 
part  of  the  locomotive,  and  two  of  them  acted  upon 
each  crank-shaft  as  before,  giving  a  separate  motion 
to  each  driving  wheel. 

The  exhaust  steam  was  conducted  through  two 
copper  tanks  for  heating  the  feed  water  to  a  high 
61 


AUTOMOBILE   BIOGRAPHIES 

temperature,  and  thence  passed  to'  the  chimney.  The 
steering-gear  consisted  of  an  external  pillar  contain- 
ing a  vertical  shaft,  at  the  upper  end  of  which  small 
bevel-gearing  was  used,  giving  motion  to  the  vertical 
shaft,  whose  bottom  end  carried  a  pinion  gearing  into 
a  sector  attached  to  the  fore  axle.  The  motion  of 
the  crank-shafts  was  communicated  to  the  separate 
axles  of  the  driving-wheels  by  spur-gearing  with  two 
speeds. 

In  experiments  made  with  this  carriage,  the  great- 
est speed  obtained  upon  a  level,  on  a  very  indifferent 
road,  was  at  the  rate  of  fifteen  miles  an  hour,  and  it 
never  ran  more  than  three  or  four  miles  without 
breaking  some  of  the  steam  joints.  The  Mechanic's 
Magazine,  reporting  one  of  these  trials,  said :  "A 
series  of  interesting  experiments  were  made  through- 
out the  whole  of  yesterday  with  a  new  steam  car- 
riage belonging  to  Sir  James  Anderson,  Bart.,  and 
W.  H.  James,  Esq.,  on  the  Vauxhall,  Kensington, 
and  Clapham  roads,  with  the  view  of  ascertaining  the 
practical  advantages  of  some  perfectly  novel  appara- 
tus attached  to  the  engines,  the  results  of  which  were 
so  satisfactory  that  the  proprietors  intend  immediate- 
ly establishing  several  stage  coaches  on  the  principle. 
The  writer  was  favored  with  a  ride  during  the  last 
experiment,  when  the  machine  proceeded  from 
Vauxhall  Bridge  to  the  Swan  at  Clapham,  a  distance 
of  two  and  a  half  miles,  which  was  run  at  the  rate 
of  fifteen  miles  an  hour.  From  what  I  had  the  pleas- 
ure of  witnessing,  I  am  confident  that  this  carriage 
is  far  superior  to  every  other  locomotive  carriage 
hitherto  brought  before  the  public,  and  that  she  will 
easily  perform  fifteen  miles  an  hour  throughout  a 
62 


PIONEER  INVENTORS 

long  journey.  The  body  o-f  the  carriage,  if  not  ele- 
gant, is  neat,  being  the  figure  of  a  parallelogram.  It 
is  a  very  small  and  compact  machine,  and  runs  upon 
four  wheels.'' 

W.  H.  James  patented  another  steam  carriage  in 
August,  1832.  This  varied  much  from  his  earlier 
engines  in  the  working  parts,  and  it  was  not  gener- 
ally considered  to  be  as  satisfactory  as  the  others. 
Sir  James  Anderson  was  not  able,  for  pecuniary 
reasons,  to  continue  to  back  James  in  his  experiment- 
ing, and  it  does  not  appear  that  these  plans  of  1832 
were  ever  consummated  in  a  completed  vehicle. 

James  was  a  man  of  strong  mind,  an  original 
thinker  and  thoroughly  well-trained  by  his  appren- 
ticeship with  his  father.  He  spent  a  good  part  of  his 
life  in  experimenting  with  common-road  steam  pro- 
pulsion, but  he  had  not  monetary  resources  or  finan- 
cial ability  commensurate  with  his  mechanical  genius. 
When  the  support  of  Anderson  was  withdrawn  from 
him  he  seems  to  have  been  compelled  to  give  up. 
Little  has  been  recorded  concerning  the  latter  years 
of  his  life,  and  his  death  in  the  almshouse  sufficiently 
indicates  the  poverty  in  which  his  last  years  were 
spent.  His  father  also  sacrificed  his  life  to  the  cause 
of  railroad  advancement,  losing  his  entire  fortune 
and  dying  a  poor  man. 


AUTOMOBILE    BIOGRAPHIES 
GOLDSWORTHY  GURNEY 

Born  at  Treator,  near  Padstow,  Cornwall,  Eng- 
land, February  14,  1793.  Died  at  Reeds,  near  Bade, 
February  28,  1875. 

The  son  of  John  Gurney,  Goldsworthy  Gurney 
received  a  good  elementary  education  at  the  Truro 
Grammar  School,  and  then  studied  medicine.  He 
settled  at  Wadebridge  as  a  surgeon,  but  although 
very  successful,  gradually  turned  his  attention  to 
scientific  and  mechanical  investigations.  He  con- 
structed an  organ,  studied  chemistry  and  mechanical 
science,  and  removing  to  London  in  1820,  delivered 
a  series  of  lectures  on  heat,  electricity  and  gases  at 
the  Surrey  Institute.  His  investigations  resulted  in 
the  invention  of  the  oxy-hydrogen  blowpipe,  and  the 
discovery  of  the  powerful  lime-light  known  as  the 
Drummond  light,  and  he  engaged  in  other  experi- 
ments in  this  field  of  research. 

In  1804,  while  on  a  holiday  at  Camborne,  he  saw  a 
Trevithick  engine  on  wheels.  Recalling  this  in  after 
years  he  began  experimenting  on  steam  locomotion 
in  1823,  and  soon  abandoned  his  surgical  and  medi- 
cal practice  for  this  new  pursuit.  His  first  efforts 
were  toward  the  construction  of  an  engine  to  travel 
on  the  common  roads.  The  weight  of  the  steam 
engines  that  were  then  being  built  seemed  to  him  to 
offer  great  objections  to  their  use  for  this  purpose, 
but  he  succeeded,  with  his  first  machine,  in  reducing 
weight  from  four  tons  to  thirty  hundredweight. 
Then  he  secured  a  sufficiency  of  power  by  the  in- 
vention of  the  high-pressure  steam  jet.  This  inven- 
tion differed  from  those  of  Stephenson  and  Trevi- 
thick, who  sent  their  waste  steam  up  through  the 
64 


PIONEER  INVENTORS 

chimney  instead  of  utilizing  it.  The  Gurney  jet  was 
applied  to  the  Stephenson  Rocket  engine  on  the 
Liverpool  and  Manchester  Railway,  in  October, 
1829,  and  also  to  steamboats  and  steam  carriages. 

In  1823,  Gurney  made  his  first  experiments  with 
a  model  steam  carriage,  on  which  propellers  or  feet 
were  used.  Two  years  later,  in  1825,  he  completed 
a  full-size  carriage  on  the  same  plan,  and  in  May 
of  that  year  he  took  out  his  first  patent  for  this 
vehicle.  The  carriage  was  impelled  by  these  legs 
being  alternately  drawn  forwards  and  pressed  back- 
wards by  a  steam  engine  acting  upon  them  through 
movable  oblong  blocks,  to  which  they  were  at- 
tached. As  a  first  experiment  this  carriage  was 
driven  up  Windmill  Hill,  near  Kilburn.  Another 
trip,  between  London  and  Edgeware,  demonstrated 
the  inefficiency  of  these  propellers,  and  led  to  the  dis- 
covery that  there  was  sufficient  friction  between 
wheels  and  the  ground  to  insure  propulsion. 

In  1826  he  constructed  a  coach  about  twenty  feet 
long,  \vhich  would  accommodate  six  inside  and  fif- 
teen outside  passengers,  besides  the  engineer.  The 
driving-wheels  were  five  feet  diameter,  and  the  lead- 
ing wheels  three  feet  nine  inches  diameter.  Two 
propellers  were  used,  which  could  be  put  in  motion 
when  the  carriage  was  climbing  hills.  Gurney's 
patent  boiler  was  used  for  supplying  steam  to  the 
twelve  horse-power  engine.  The  total  weight  of  the 
carriage  was  about  a  ton  and  a  half.  In  front  of 
the  coach  was  a  capacious  boot,  while  behind,  that 
which  had  the  appearance  of  a  boot,  was  the  case  for 
the  boiler  and  the  furnace,  from  which  it  was  cal- 
culated that  no  inconvenience  would  be  experienced 

65 


AUTOMOBILE   BIOGRAPHIES 

by  the  outside  passenger,  although  in  cold  weather 
a  certain  degree  of  heat  might  be  obtained,  if  re- 
quired. In  descending  a  hill,  there  was  a  brake 
fixed  on  the  hind  wheel,  to  increase  the  friction ;  but, 
independently  of  this,  the  guide  had  the  power  of 
lessening  the  force  of  the  steam  to  any  extent  by 
means  of  the  lever  at  his  right  hand,  which  operated 
upon  the  throttle  valve,  and  by  which  he  could  stop  the 
action  of  the  steam  altogether  and  effect  a  counter 
vacuum  in  the  cylinders.  By  this  means  also-  he  regu- 
lated the  rate  of  progress  on  the  road.  There  was 
another  lever  by  which  he  could  stop  the  vehicle 
instantly,  and  in  a  moment  reverse  the  motion  of  the 
wheels. 

This  carriage  traveled  up  Highgate  Hill  to  Edge- 
ware,  and  also  to  Stanmore,  and  went  up  both  Stan- 
more  Hill  and  Brockley  Hill.  In  ascending  these 
hills  the  driving-wheels  did  not  slip,  so  that  the  legs 
were  not  needed.  After  these  experiments  the  pro- 
pellers were  removed. 

Gurney  obtained  another  patent  in  1827,  and  un- 
der this  worked  a  steam  carriage  resembling  the 
common  stage  coach,  with  the  boiler  in  the  hind  boot. 
This  carriage  was  run  experimentally  to-  Barnet, 
Edgeware,  Finchley,  and  other  places,  and  in  1828 
it  was  said  that  a  trip  was  made  from  London  to 
Melksham,  thirteen  miles  from  Bath,  a  distance  of 
nearly  two  hundred  miles.  On  the  return  trip  the 
rate  of  speed  was  about  twelve  miles  an  hour. 

Gurney's  carriage  so  fully  established  its  practica- 
bility, that  in  1830,  Sir  Charles  Dance  contracted 
for  several,  and  ran  them  successfully  from  London 
to  Holyhead,  and  from  Birmingham  to  Bristol.  In 
66 


PIONEER  INVENTORS 

the  following  year  he  ran  over  the  turnpike  road  be- 
tween Gloucester  and  Cheltenham  for  four  months 
in  succession,  four  times  a  day,  without  an  accident 
or  delay  of  consequence.  The  distance  of  nine  miles 
was  regularly  covered  in  from  forty-five  to  fifty-five 
minutes.  Nearly  three  thousand  persons  were  car- 
ried, and  nearly  four  thousand  miles  traveled. 

A  strong  public  sentiment  against  the  use  of  the 
common  roads  by  these  vehicles  sprang  up,  and  Par- 
liament was  prevailed  upon  to  impose  upon  steam 
carriages  heavy  highway  tolls  that  were  in  effect 
prohibitory.  Sir  Charles  Dance  suspended  his 
operations.  Gurney  petitioned  the  House  of  Com- 
mons for  relief.  Several  committees  in  1831,  1834 
and  1835  investigated  the  subject  and  reported 
strongly  in  favor  of  steam  carriages,  but  no  legisla- 
tion could  be  secured,  and  Gurney  was  forced  to  give 
up  further  introduction  of  steam  carriages. 

He  continued  his  experimenting  in  other  direc- 
tions, invented  the  stove  that  bore  his  name,  intro- 
duced new  methods  of  lighting  and  ventilating  the 
Houses  of  Parliament,  and  was  otherwise  active  in 
scientific  pursuits.  He  was  a  magistrate  for  Corn- 
wall and  Devonshire,  and  in  1863  was  knighted  in 
recognition  of  his  discoveries  and  inventions. 

By  writers  of  that  period  Gurney  received  a  great 
deal  of  credit  and  an  abundance  of  advertising  for 
his  work.  He  was  especially  conspicuous  in  the 
Parliamentary  investigations  regarding  steam  car- 
riages. On  the  whole,  however,  it  is  generally  con- 
sidered that  he  was  proclaimed  far  beyond  his 
merits,  especially  in  comparison  with  such  rivals  as 
Hancock,  Maceroni  and  others. 


AUTOMOBILE  BIOGRAPHIES 

THOMAS  BLANCHARD 

Born  in  Sutton,  Mass.,  June  24,  1788.  Died, 
April  1 6,  1864. 

Blanchard  received  a  common  school  education, 
and  before  he  had  entered  his  teens  his  mechanical 
genius  began  to  show  itself.  At  thirteen  years  of 
age  he  invented  a  machine  for  paring  apples,  and 
shortly  after, '  a  machine  for  making  tacks.  His 
great  work  was  the  invention  of  a  machine  for  turn- 
ing out  articles  of  irregular  form  from  wood  and 
metals.  His  lathes  for  this  purpose  were  put  in 
operation  by  the  United  States  Government  in  the 
armories  at  Harper's  Ferry,  Va.,  and  Springfield, 
Mass. 

Becoming  interested  in  the  subject  of  steam  pro- 
pulsion he  made,  in  1826,  a  steamboat  that  was  suc- 
cessfully tried  on  the  Connecticut  River,  running 
from  Hartford,  Conn.,  to  Springfield,  Mass.  After- 
ward, he  built  a  boat  of  larger  size,  that  drew  eight- 
een inches  of  water,  and  ran  this  up  the  Connecticut 
River,  from  Springfield,  Mass.,  to  Vermont.  He 
also  built  other  boats  for  use  on  the  Alleghany 
River. 

The  subjects  of  railroads  and  locomotive  power 
on  land  interested  him  for  a  short  time,  and  in  1825, 
after  he  had  completed  his  engagement  with  the 
United  States  armories,  he  built,  at  Springfield, 
Mass.,  a  carriage  driven  by  steam  for  use  on  the 
common  road.  This  was  the  first  real  steam  car- 
riage constructed  in  this  country,  the  Philadelphia 
machine  of  Evans  being  but  a  rude  affair,  although 
it  involved  the  essential  principles  of  steam  propul- 
sion. The  Blanchard  carriage  was  perfectly  man- 
68 


THOMAS  BLANCHARD 


PIONEER  INVENTORS 

ageable,  could  turn  corners  and  go  backwards  and 
forwards  with  all  the  readiness  of  a  well-trained 
horse,  and  on  ascending  a  hill  the  power  could  be 
increased.  Its  performance  on  the  highway  was  al- 
together satisfactory,  and  a  patent  was  issued  to  its 
inventor. 

Blanchard  endeavored  to  secure  support  to  build  a 
railroad  in  Massachusetts,  and  the  joint  committee 
on  roads  and  canals  of  the  Massachusetts  Legisla- 
ture, in  January,  1826,  endorsed  the  model  of  his 
railway  and  steam  carriage,  and  recommended  them 
"to  all  the  friends  of  internal  improvements."  Not- 
withstanding this  report,  capitalists  viewed  the  pro- 
ject as  visionary,  and  Blanchard  met  with  no  greater 
success  when  he  subsequently  applied  to  the  Legisla- 
ture of  New  York.  Giving  up  his  plans  he  thence- 
forward devoted  his  attention  to  the  subject  of  steam 
navigation. 

Blanchard  was  a  prolific  inventor,  having  taken 
out  no  less  than  thirty  or  forty  patents  for  as  many 
different  inventions.  He  did  not  reap  great  benefit 
from  his  labors,  for  many  of  his  inventions  scarcely 
paid  the  cost  of  getting  them  up,  while  others  were 
appropriated  without  payment  to  him,  or  even  giving 
him  credit.  His  machine  for  turning  irregular  forms 
was  his  most  notable  work,  and  even  of  that,  others 
sought  to  defraud  him.  To  defend  himself  he  was 
forced  to  go  to  the  courts  and  even  to  Congress,  be- 
fore he  succeeded  in  establishing  his  rights.  After 
the  success  of  this  machine  he  made  other  improve- 
ments in  the  manufacture  of  arms,  constructing  thir- 
teen different  machines  that  were  operated  in  the 
government  armories. 


AUTOMOBILE  BIOGRAPHIES 

JOHNSON 

Two  brothers  Johnson  had  a  small  engineering  es- 
tablishment in  Philadelphia,  in  1828.  They  put 
upon  the  streets  in  that  year  a  vehicle  that  J.  G. 
Pangborn,  in  his  The  World's  Rail  Way,  says  was 
"the  first  steam  wagon  built,  and  actually  operated 
as  such,  in  the  United  States."  The  same  writer, 
describing  this  wagon,  says  that  it  had  a  single  cyl- 
inder set  horizontally,  with  a  connecting-rod  attach- 
ment with  a  single  crank  at  the  middle  of  the  driv- 
ing-axle. Its  two  driving-wheels  were  eight  feet  in 
diameter  and  made  of  wood,  the  same  as  those  on  an 
ordinary  road  wagon.  The  two  forward  or  guiding 
wheels  were  much  smaller  than  the  others,  and  were 
arranged  in  the  usual  manner  of  a  common  wagon. 
It  had  an  upright  boiler  hung  up  behind,  shaped  like 
a  huge  bottle,  the  smoke-stack  coming  out  through 
the  center  of  the  top.  The  safety-valve  was  held 
down  by  a  weight  and  lever,  and  the  horses  in  the 
neighborhood  did  not  take  at  all  kindly  to  the  puffing 
of  the  machine  as  it  jolted  over  the  rough  streets. 
Generally  it  ran  well,  and  could  take  without  diffi- 
cult)7 reasonable  grades  in  the  streets  and  roadways. 
During  its  existence,  however,  it  knocked  down  a 
number  of  awning-posts,  ran  into  and  broke  several 
window  fronts,  and  sometimes  was  altogether  un- 
manageable. Like  all  others  of  their  day,  however, 
the  Johnsons  were  ahead  of  their  time.  There  was  no 
demand  for  their  steam  wagon,  road  conditions  made 
it  unavailable  and  the  machine  itself  was,  despite 
much  merit,  really  not  much  more  than  a  sug- 
gestion of  better  things  three-quarters  of  a  century 
later. 

70 


PIONEER  INVENTORS 

WALTER  HANCOCK 

Born  in  Marlborough,  Wiltshire,  England,  June 
1 6,  1799.  Died  May  14,  1852. 

The  father  of  Walter  Hancock  was  James  Han- 
cock, a  timber  merchant  and  cabinet  maker.  Walter 
received  a  common  school  education,  and  then  was 
apprenticed  to  a  watchmaker  and  jeweler  in  London. 
The  bent  of  his  inclination,  however,  was  toward 
engineering,  and  he  turned  his  attention  to  experi- 
menting along  the  lines  that  were  at  that  time  ab- 
sorbing the  thoughts  and  efforts  of  those  men  of 
England  interested  in  mechanical  and  scientific 
subjects. 

He  was  foremost  among  those  who  in  the  early 
part  of  the  nineteenth  century  were  engaged  in  trying 
to  solve  the  problem  of  steam  carriage  locomotion 
on  the  common  highways.  The  story  of  his  work 
in  this  direction  is  fully  told  by  himself  in  his  Narra- 
tive of  Twelve  Years'  Experiments,  1824-36,  Dem- 
onstrative of  the  Practicability  and  Advantage  of 
Employing  Steam  Carriages  on  Common  Roads,  a 
book  published  in  London,  in  1838.  This  volume 
contains  a  full  account  of  his  labors,  and  descrip- 
tions of  all  the  carriages  that  he  built  and  ran.  The 
following  extract  from  the  introduction  of  the  book 
shows  in  what  esteem  Hancock  regarded  himself 
and  what  estimate  he  placed  upon  the  value  of  his 
work : 

"The  author  of  these  pages  believes  he  should  of- 
fend alike  against  truth  and  genuine  modesty  were 
he  to  yield  to  any  of  the  steam  carriage  inventors 
who  have  appeared  in  his  day,  in  a  single  particular 
of  desert;  he  began  earlier  (with  one  abortive  ex- 
71 


AUTOMOBILE    BIOGRAPHIES 

ception)  and  has  persevered  longer  and  more  un- 
ceasingly than  any  of  them.  He  was  the  first  to 
run  a  steam  carriage  for  hire  on  a  common  road,  and 
is  still  the  only  person  who  has  ventured  in  a  steam 
vehicle  to  traverse  the  most  crowded  streets  of  the 
metropolis  at  the  busiest  periods  of  the  day;  he  has 
built  a  greater  number  of  steam  carriages  (if  not 
better)  than  anyone  else,  and  has  been  thus  enabled 
to  try  a  greater  variety  of  forms  of  construction,  out 
of  which  to  choose  the  best." 

In  1824,  Hancock  invented  a  steam  engine  in 
which  the  ordinary  cylinder  and  piston  were  replaced 
by  two  flexible  steam  receivers,  composed  of  several 
layers  of  canvas  firmly  united  together  by  coatings 
of  dissolved  caoutchouc,  or  india-rubber,  and  thus 
enabled  to  resist  a  pressure  of  steam  of  sixty  pounds 
upon  the  square  inch.  This  engine  he  tried  to 
adapt  to  steam  carriages,  but  found  that  he  could  not 
get  the  requisite  degree  of  power  for  locomotion,  al- 
though it  worked  very  well  as  a  stationary  engine  of 
four  horse-power  at  his  factory  in  Stratford.  Next 
he  invented  a  tubular  boiler  with  sixteen  horizontal 
tubes,  each  connected  with  each  other  by  lesser  tubes, 
so  that  the  water  or  steam  might  circulate  through 
the  entire  series.  This  boiler  was  subsequently 
changed  by  arranging  the  tubes  vertically,  and  a  pat- 
ent was  taken  out  in  1825. 

After  further  experiments  and  improvements, 
Hancock  finally  made  a  vehicle  to  travel  on  three 
wheels,  getting  power  from  a  pair  of  vibrating  or 
trunnion  engines  fixed  upon  the  crank-axle  of  the  fore 
wheels.  Experimental  trips  of  this  carriage  were 
made  from  the  Stratford  shop  to  Epping  Forest, 


PIONEER  INVENTORS 

Paddington,  Hounslow,  Croydon,  Fulham,  and  else- 
where. Some  changes  were  made  in  the  vehicle,  and 
finally  the  trunnion  engines  were  put  aside  and  fixed 
ones  substituted. 

This  improved  carriage,  the  first  in  a  long  series 
built  by  Hancock,  was  named  the  Infant.  The  body 
was  in  the  form  of  a  double-body  coach,  or  omnibus, 
with  seats  for  passengers  inside  and  out.  The  bulk 
of  the  machinery  was  placed  in  the  rear  o>f  the  car- 
riage, a  boiler  and  a  fire  being  beneath  it.  Between 
the  boiler  and  the  passengers'  seats  was  the  engine 
and  a  place  for  the  engineer.  A  pair  of  inverted 
fixed  engines  working  vertically  on  a  crank-shaft 
furnished  the  power.  The  steering  apparatus  was 
in  front.  The  whole  carriage  was  on  one  frame 
supported  by  four  springs  on  the  axle  of  each  wheel. 
The  carriage  was  capable  of  carrying  sixteen  passen- 
gers besides  the  engineer  and  guide.  Its  total  weight, 
including  coke  and  water,  but  exclusive  of  attend- 
ants and  passengers,  was  about  three  and  one-half 
tons.  The  wheel  tires  were  three  and  one-half  inches 
wide,  and  the  diameter  of  the  hind  wheels  four  feet. 

In  February,  1831,  the  Infant  began  to  run  on 
regular  trips  between  Stratford  and  London.  In  1832 
a  second  carriage,  similar  to  the  Infant,  was  built, 
and  called  the  Era.  It  was  constructed  for  the  Lon- 
don and  Brighton  Steam  Carriage  Company,  to  ply 
between  London  and  Greenwich.  The  following 
year  a  third  carriage,  the  Enterprise,  was  completed, 
for  the  London  and  Paddington  Steam  Car  Com- 
pany, and  was  run  between  London  and  Paddington. 

Hancock  took  the  Infant  on  a  long  trip  from 
Stratford  to  London  and  Brighton,  in  October,  1832. 
73 


AUTOMOBILE   BIOGRAPHIES 

Eleven  passengers  were  carried,  and  the  carriage 
kept  a  speed  of  nine  miles  an  hour  on  the  level,  and 
six  to  eight  miles  an  hour  up  grade.  On  the  return 
one  mile  up  hill  was  made  at  the  rate  of  seventeen 
miles  an  hour.  Another  trip  to  Brighton  was  made 
in  September  oi  the  next  year  at  an  average  speed  of 
twelve  miles  an  hour  actual  traveling.  At  Brigh- 
ton the  new  carriage  attracted  much  attention,  and 
was  exhibited  for  several  days  on  trips  in  and  around 
the  to\vn.  After  the  Enterprise,  the  Autopsy  came 
from  the  Hancock  shops,  in  September,  1833.  This 
carriage  was  run  on  trial  about  Brighton  and  in  Lon- 
don streets,  and  for  about  a  month  was  run  for  hire 
between  Finsbury  Square  and  Pentonville. 

A  small  steam  drag  or  tug  to  draw  an  attached 
coach  or  omnibus  was  the  next  production  of  the 
Hancock  establishment,  which  had  already  attained 
more  than  local  fame.  This  was  built  for  a  Herr 
Voigtlander,  of  Vienna,  and  on  one  of  its  trial 
trips  it  carried  ten  persons  and  an  attached  four- 
wheeled  carriage  with  six  persons  in  it.  With  this 
load  a  speed  of  fourteen  miles  an  hour  on  the  level 
was  attained,  and  eight  to  nine  miles  an  hour  on 
up  grades. 

Beginning  in  August,  1834,  the  Era  and  the  Au- 
topsy were  run  daily  in  London  between  the  City, 
Moorgate  and  Paddington.  During  the  ensuing  four 
months  over  four  thousand  passengers  were  carried. 
Each  coach  carried  from  ten  to  twelve  passengers, 
and  the  trip  from  Moorgate  to  Paddington,  five 
miles,  was  made  in  a  half  hour,  including  stops. 
On  the  trial  trip  a  speed  of  twelve  miles  an  hour, 
exclusive  of  stops,  was  maintained. 
74 


PIONEER  INVENTORS 

Later  in  the  same  year  the  Era,  with  its  name 
changed  to  the  Erin,  was  sent  to  Dublin,  Ireland, 
where  it  was  exhibited  and  run  in  and  about  the  city, 
by  Hancock,  for  eight  days,  before  it  was  reshipped 
to  Stratford.  Next  in  turn  came  a  drag  of  larger 
size  than  any  before  built,  with  an  engine  of  greater 
capacity.  On  the  trial  trip  this  drew,  on  a  level 
road,  at  a  speed  of  ten  miles  an  hour,  three  omni- 
buses and  one  stage  coach  with  fifty  passengers.  In 
July,  1835,  the  trip  to  Reading,  a  distance  of  thirty- 
eight  miles,  was  made  in  three,  hours  forty  minutes 
twenty-five  seconds;  actual  running  time,  exclusive 
of  stops,  three  hours  eight  minutes  ten  seconds,  at 
a  moving  rate  of  over  twelve  miles  an  hour.  Sub- 
sequently, this  drag  was  made  over  into  a  carriage, 
like  the  others  of  the  Hancock  type,  fitted  for  eight- 
een passengers,  and  named  the  Automaton. 

In  August,  1835,  the  Erin  ran  from  London  to 
Marlborough,  a  distance  of  seventy-eight  miles,  in 
seven  hours  forty-nine  minutes,  exclusive  of  stops, 
averaging  nine  and  six-tenths  miles  an  hour.  The 
return  from  Marlborough  to  London  was  accom- 
plished in  seven  hours  thirty-six  minutes,  exclusive 
of  stops,  an  average  of  nine  and  eight-tenths  miles 
an  hour.  In  the  same  month  the  Erin  made  the  run 
from  London  to  Birmingham  at  the  rate  of  ten  miles 
an  hour. 

In  1836,  Hancock  ran  all  his  carriages  on  a  regular 
route  on  the  Stratford  and  Islington  roads  for  a 
period  of  twenty  weeks,  making  in  that  time  seven 
hundred  and  twelve  trips,  covering  four  thousand 
two  hundred  miles,  and  carrying  twelve  thousand 
seven  hundred  and  sixty-one  passengers. 
75 


AUTOMOBILE  BIOGRAPHIES 

After  running  his  carriages  for  several  years  dis- 
sensions in  the  companies  that  were  promoting  the 
new  means  of  travel,  and  the  increasing  efficiency  of 
railways,  led  to  the  discontinuance  of  Hancock's 
energy  in  this  direction.  Thereafter  he  built  only  a 
steam  phaeton  for  his  personal  use;  this  had  seats 
for  three,  and  was  used  about  the  City,  Hyde  Park 
and  the  London  suburbs.  Hancock's  steam  vehicles 
were  ten  in  number — the  experimental  three-wheel- 
er, the  trunnion-engine  Infant,  the  fixed  engine  In- 
fant, the  Era,  afterward  the  Erin,  the  Enterprise,  the 
Autopsy,  the  Austrian  drag,  the  Irish  drag,  the 
Automaton,  and  the  phaeton. 

Hancock  turned  his  attention  in  the  later  years  of 
his  life  to  developing  the  use  of  india-rubber,  in 
connection  with  his  brother,  Thomas  Hancock,  who 
was  one  of  the  foremost  rubber  manufacturers  of 
England.  He  secured  several  patents  for  improve- 
ments in  manufacturing  rubber. 

At  the  time  when  Hancock  was  at  work  upon  his 
steam  carriages,  Gurney  was  also  in  the  front  and 
there  was  considerable  jealousy  between  the  two. 
Dr.  Larclner  and  others  were  active  in  exploiting 
Gurney,  while  Hancock  was  supported  in  contro- 
versies by  Alexander  Gordon,  Luke  Hebert  and 
others.  That  Hancock  achieved  most  in  the  way  of 
definite  results  and  that  his  experimenting  and  ac- 
complishments were  more  markedly  along  thor- 
oughly intelligent  and  conservatively  practical  me- 
chanical lines  than  any  of  his  rivals  is  now  generally 
conceded.  His  carriages  were  admirable  produc- 
tions as  road  vehicles,  well-built,  attractive  and  com- 
fortable. 


PIONEER  INVENTORS 

WILLIAM  T.  JAMES 

An  engineer  of  New  York,  who  was  engaged  in 
experimenting  about  1829  James  made,  in  his  shop  in 
Eldridge  Court,  several  small  models  of  vehicles  that 
proved  sufficiently  satisfactory.  His  first  engine  had 
two-inch  cylinders  and  four-inch  stroke.  This  ran 
.  around  a  track  on  the  floor  of  his  shop,  and  drew  a 
train  of  four  cars,  carrying  an  apprentice  boy  on  each 
car.  James'  second  locomotive  was  mounted  on 
three  wheels,  two  drivers  in  the  rear  and  a  steering 
wheel,  and  it  ran  on  the  floor  or  sidewalk. 

In  1829,  James,  satisfied  with  his  experimenting, 
built  a  steam  carriage  capable  of  carrying  passen- 
gers, and  with  this  he  made  very  good  time  over  the 
streets  and  roadways  in  and  about  the  metropolis. 
He  then  adopted  the  rotary  cylinders  instead  of  the 
reciprocating,  in  his  engine,  which  had  two  six-inch 
cylinders,  and  was  supported  on  three  wheels.  On 
each  cylinder  were  two  fixed  eccentrics,  one  for  the 
forward  and  one  for  the  backing  motion.  The  slide 
valve  of  one  cylinder  had  a  half-inch  lap  at  each 
end,  and  exhausted  its  steam  into  the  other. 

In  1830,  James  made  his  fourth  full-size  steam 
carriage.  This  was  a  three-wheeled  vehicle,  the 
rear  wheels  being  drivers  three  feet  in  diameter,  and 
the  third  the  front  or  steering  wheel.  In  1831,  in  a 
competition  for  the  best  locomotive  engine  adapted 
to  the  Baltimore  and  Ohio  Railroad  Company, 
James  built  his  fifth  locomotive,  and  the  first 
one  to  run  on  rails.  His  engine  did  not  secure  the 
prize,  but  the  company,  thinking  his  machine  con- 
tained valuable  ideas,  entered  into  an  arrangement 
with  him  for  further  experimenting. 

77 


AUTOMOBILE  BIOGRAPHIES 

FRANCIS  MACERONI 

Born  in  Manchester,  England,  in  1788.     Died  in. 
London,  July  25,  1846. 

The  father  of  Francis  Macaroni  was  Peter  Au- 
gustus Maceroni  who,  with  two  brothers,  served  in 
a  French  regiment  in  the  American  Revolution. 
After  that  conflict  was  ended  he  went  to  England 
and  settled  in  Manchester,  where  he  was  Italian 
agent  for  British  manufacturers. 

Francis  Maceroni  was  educated  in  the  Roman 
Catholic  school,  in  Hampshire;  at  the  Dominican 
Academy,  in  Surrey,  and  at  the  college  at  Old  Hall 
Green,  near  Puckerbridge,  Hertfordshire.  During 
a  period  of  ten  years,  from  1803  to  1813,  he  lived  in 
Rome  and  Naples  as  a  young  gentleman  of  elegant 
leisure.  In  1813  he  began  the  study  of  anatomy  and 
medicine,  but  had  not  gone  far  in  those  pursuits  be- 
fore his  vagrom  disposition  took  him  in  another  di- 
rection. He  became  aide-de-camp  to  Murat,  King 
of  Naples,  with  the  rank  of  Colonel  of  Cavalry.  His 
service  with  Murat  took  him  on  missions  to  England 
and  France,  and  for  a  time  he  was  a  prisoner  of  the 
French  authorities. 

After  two  years  of  this  military  service,  he  re- 
turned to  England,  and  retained  his  residence  there 
for  the  rest  of  his  life.  He  did  not  remain  at  home 
long,  however,  for  he  was  with  Sir  George  Mac- 
Gregor  at  Porto  Bello,  in  1819;  became  a  brigadier- 
general  of  the  new  republic  of  Colombia,  and  in 
1821  saw  service  in  Spain  with  General  Pepe. 

Returning  again  to  England,  he  came  before  the 
public  as  an  advocate  of  a  ship  canal  across  the 
Isthmus,  between  the  Atlantic  and  Pacific  oceans, 

78 


PIONEER  INVENTORS 

and  also  promoted  a  company,  called  The  Atlantic 
and  Pacific  Junction  and  South  American  Mining 
and  Trading  Company,  with  a  capital  of  one  million 
pounds  sterling.  The  company  collapsed  in  the 
commercial  panic  of  1825,  and  this  soldier  of  fortune 
in  1829  went  to  Constantinople  to>  assist  the  Turks 
against  the  Russians.  In  London  again  in  1831, 
Maceroni  was  engaged  for  the  rest  of  his  life  in  the 
cause  of  highway  steam  locomotion,  in  which  he  ac- 
complished a  great  deal. 

Maceroni  was  second  only  to  Walter  Hancock  as 
an  inventor  and  builder  of  steam  road  carriages  and 
as  a  promoter  of  travel  by  those  vehicles.  From 
1825  to  1828  he  was  with  Golds  worthy  Gurney  in 
London,  but  his  real  activity  did  not  begin  until 
1831,  when  he  became  associated  with  John  Squire. 
In  1833,  Maceroni  and  Squire  took  out  a  patent  for 
a  multi-tubular  boiler,  which  they  applied  to<  a  steam 
carriage  that  one  writer  of  that  day  described  as  "a 
fine  specimen  of  indomitable  perseverance."  It  often 
traveled  at  the  rate  of  from  eighteen  to  twenty  miles 
an  hour.  The  engines  were  placed  horizontally  un- 
derneath the  carriage  body,  the  boiler  was  arranged 
at  the  back,  and  a  fan  was  used  to  urge  the  combus- 
tion of  the  fuel,  the  supply  of  which  was  regulated 
by  the  engineman,  who  had  a  seat  behind.  The  pas- 
sengers were  placed  in  the  open  carriage  body,  and 
their  seats  were  upon  the  tops  of  the  water  tanks. 
There  were  two  cylinders  seven  and  one-half  inches 
in  diameter,  the  stroke  being  fifteen  and  three-quar- 
ter inches.  The  diameter  of  the  steam  pipe  was  two 
and  one-quarter  inches,  and  that  of  the  exhaust  pipe 
was  two  and  three-quarter  inches. 
79 


AUTOMOBILE  BIOGRAPHIES 

The  carriage  attracted  a  great  deal  of  attention, 
and  much  was  written  about  it  in  the  newspapers  of 
the  time.  Once  the  trip  was  taken  to  Harrow-on- 
the-Hill,  a  distance  of  nine  miles,  in  fifty-eight  min- 
utes, without  the  full  power  of  steam  being  on  at  any 
time.  For  several  weeks  in  the  early  part  of  1834 
the  carriage  was  running  daily  from  Oxford  Street 
to  Edgeware.  Several  trips  were  made  to  Uxbridge, 
when  the  roads  were  in  very  bad  condition,  but  the 
journey  from  the  Regent's  Circus,  Oxford  Street,  a 
distance  of  sixteen  miles,  was  often  performed  in  a 
little  over  an  hour.  A  trip  to  Watford  was  made, 
and  one  of  the  passengers  thus  described  the  experi- 
ence from  Bushby  Heath  into  the  village  of  Watford  : 

"We  set  off  from  the  starting  place  amid  the  cheers 
of  the  villagers.  The  motion  was  so  steady  that  wre 
could  have  read  with  ease,  and  the  noise  was  no 
worse  than  that  produced  by  a  common  vehicle.  On 
arriving  at  the  summit  of  Clay  Hill,  the  local  and  in- 
experienced attendant  neglected  to  clog  the  wheel 
until  it  became  impossible.  We  went  thundering 
down  the  hill  at  the  rate  of  thirty  miles  an  hour. 
Mr.  Squire  was  steersman,  and  never  lost  his  pres- 
ence of  mind.  It  may  be  conceived  what  amazement 
a  thing  of  this  kind,  flashing  through  the  village  of 
Bushy,  occasioned  among  the  inhabitants.  The  peo- 
ple seemed  petrified  on  seeing  a  carriage  without 
horses.  In  the  busy  and  populous  town  of  Watford 
the  sensation  was  similar — the  men  gazed  in  speech- 
less wonder;  the  women  clapped  their  hands.  We 
turned  round  at  the  end  of  the  street  in  magnificent 
style,  and  ascended  Clay  Hill  at  the  same  rate  as  the 
stage  coaches  drawn  by  five  horses." 
80 


PIONEER  INVENTORS 

Macaroni  made  two  steam  carriages,  but  in  1834 
he  separated  from  Squire,  and  becoming  short  of 
funds  fell  into  the  clutches  of  Asda,  an  Italian  Jew, 
who  persuaded  him  to  let  the  two  carriages  go  to  the 
Continent.  One  was  sent  to  Brussels,  where  it  ran 
successfully,  and  the  other  went  to  Paris.  The  per- 
formance of  the  latter  was  thus  described  in  the 
columns  of  a  Paris  journal :  "The  steam  carriage 
brought  to  perfection  in  England  by  Colonel  Ma- 
ceroni, ran  along  the  Boulevards  as  far  as  the  Rue 
Faubourg  du  Temple.  It  turned  with  the  greatest 
facility,  ran  the  whole  length  of  the  Boulevards  back 
again,  and  along  the  Rue  Royale,  to  the  Place  Louis 
XV.  This  carriage  is  very  elegant,  much  lighter, 
and  by  no  means  so  noisy  as  the  one  we  saw  here 
some  months  ago,  and  it  excited  along  its  way  the 
surprise  and  applause  of  the  astonished  spectators. 
All  the  hills  on  the  paved  Boulevard  were  ascended 
with  astonishing  rapidity.  One  of  our  colleagues 
was  in  this  carriage  the  whole  of  its  running  above 
described,  and  he  declares  that  there  is  not  the  least 
heat  felt  inside  from  the  fire,  and  that  conversation 
can  be  kept  up  so  as  to  be  heard  at  a  much  lower  tone 
than  in  most  ordinary  carriages." 

Asda  sold  the  carriage  and  the  patent  for  a  large 
sum  of  money,  and  swindled  Maceroni  out  of  all  his 
share.  For  years  the  inventor  was  in  the  direst  ex- 
tremes of  poverty.  In  1841  he  succeeded  in  secur- 
ing the  support  of  The  General  Steam  Carriage  Com- 
pany to  construct  and  run  carriages  under  his  patent. 
Disagreement  between  the  directors  and  the  manu- 
facturing engineer  again  brought  to  Maceroni  disas- 
ter, from  which  he  was  never  able  to  recover. 
81 


AUTOMOBILE  BIOGRAPHIES 

RICHARD  ROBERTS 

Born  in  1789.     Died  in  March,  1864. 

Roberts  was  best  known  as  a  Manchester,  Eng- 
land, engineer,  of  the  firm  of  Sharp,  Roberts  &  Co. 
He  built  a  steam  road  locomotive  that  was  first  tried 
in  December,  1833.  Three  months  later  the  ma- 
chine was  subjected  to  a  second  trial.  The  carriage 
went  out  under  the  guidance  of  Mr.  Roberts,  with 
forty  passengers.  It  proceeded  about  a  mile  and  a 
half,  made  a  difficult  turn  where  the  road  was  nar- 
row, and  returned  to  the  works  without  accident. 
The  maximum  speed  on  the  level  was  nearly  twenty 
miles  an  hour.  Hills  were  mounted  easily.  No 
doubt  existed  of  the  engine  being  speedily  put  in 
complete  and  effective  condition  for  actual  service. 
During  another  experimental  trip  in  April  of  the 
same  year,  the  locomotive  'met  with  an  accident 
caused  by  some  of  the  boiler  tubes  giving  way,  al- 
lowing the  steam  to  escape  and  the  fuel  to  be  scat- 
tered about.  No  one  was  seriously  injured,  and 
none  of  the  passengers  was  hurt. 

Roberts  invented  the  compensating  gear  that  he 
first  used  on  his  steam  carriage.  This  gear  super- 
seded claw  clutches,  friction  bands,  ratchet-wheels, 
and  other  arrangements  for  obtaining  the  full  power 
of  both  the  driving-wheels,  and  at  the  same  time  al- 
lowing for  the  engine  to  turn  the  sharpest  corner. 
In  1839,  Roberts  invented  an  arrangement  for  com- 
municating power  to  both  driving-wheels  at  all 
times,  whether  turning  to  the  right  or  left.  During 
the  latter  years  of  his  life  this  famous  engineer  lived 
in  exceedingly  straitened  circumstances,  and  he 
died  in  poverty. 

82 


PIONEER  INVENTORS 

JOHN  SCOTT  RUSSELL 

Born  at  Parkhead,  near  Glasgow,  Scotland,  May 
8,  1808.  Died  June  8,  1882,  at  Ventnor. 

The  father  of  John  Scott  Russell  was  David  Rus- 
sell, a  Scottish  clergyman,  and  the  son  was  origi- 
nally intended  for  the  church.  His  mind  was  more 
inclined  toward  mechanics  than  theology,  and  he 
entered  a  workshop  in  order  to  learn  the  trade  of  en- 
gineering. Studying  at  the  Universities  of  Edin- 
burgh, St.  Andrews  and  Glasgow,  he  was  graduated 
from  Glasgow  when  he  was  sixteen  years  of  age. 
In  1832,  upon  the  death  of  Sir  John  Leslie,  Profes- 
sor of  Natural  Philosophy  at  Edinburgh  University,. 
Russell  was  elected  to  fill  the  vacancy  temporarily. 
Shortly  after  that  he  began  his  celebrated  investiga- 
tions into  the  nature  of  the  sea  waves,  as  a  prelimin- 
ary study  to  improving  the  forms  of  ships.  As  a 
result  of  these  researches  he  developed  the  wave-line 
system  for  the  construction  of  vessels.  In  1837  he 
received  a  gold  medal  of  the  Royal  Society  of  En- 
gineers, and  was  elected  a  member  of  the  Council  of 
that  Society  for  a  paper  that  he  read  "on  the  laws 
by  which  water  opposes  resistance  to  the  motion  of 
floating  bodies/'  At  that  time  he  was  manager  of 
the  shipbuilding  words  at  Greenock,  and  under  his 
supervision  and  according  to  his  designs  several 
ships  were  built  with  lines  based  on  his  wave  sys- 
tem. Among  these  were  four  of  the  new  fleet  of  the 
West  India  Mail  Company. 

Russell  removed  to  London  in  1844,  and  became  a 
Fellow  of  the  Royal  Society  in  1847.  He  was  vice- 
president  of  the  Institute  of  Civil  Engineers  and 
secretary  of  the  Society  of  Arts.  For  many  years  he 
83 


AUTOMOBILE   BIOGRAPHIES 

was  a  shipbuilder  on  the  Thames,  and  supervised 
the  construction  of  the  celebrated  steamship  Great 
Eastern.  He  was  one  of  the  promoters  and  vice- 
president  of  the  Institute  of  Naval  Architects,  and  a 
pioneer  in  advocating  the  construction  of  iron-clad 
men-of-war.  He  published  many  papers,  princi- 
pally upon  naval  architecture. 

It  was  while  he  was  residing  in  Edinburgh  that 
he  took  out  a  patent  for  a  steam  locomotive  to  be 
used  on  the  common  roads.  The  boiler  that  he  in- 
vented was  multi-tubular,  with  the  furnace  and  the 
return  tubes  on  the  same  level,  and  similar  to  a 
marine  boiler.  The  boiler  everywhere  consisted  of 
opposite  and  parallel  surfaces,  and  these  surfaces 
were  connected  by  stays  of  small  diameter.  The 
copper  plates  of  the  boiler  were  only  one-tenth  of  an 
inch  thick.  When  put  to  actual  test  the  weakness 
of  the  boiler  thus  constructed  was  fully  demon- 
strated. 

The  engine  had  two  vertical  cylinders,  twelve 
inches  in  diameter  and  with  twelve  inches  stroke. 
The  engine  was  mounted  upon  laminated  springs, 
arranged  so  that  each  spring  in  its  flexure  described, 
at  a  particular  point,  such  a  circle  as  was  also  de- 
scribed by  the  main  axle  in  its  motion  round  the 
crank  shaft.  This  arrangement  was  intended  to 
correct  any  irregularities  in  the  road  so  that  they 
would  not  interfere  with  the  proper  working  of  the 
spur  gearing.  Exhaust  steam  was  turned  into  the 
chimney  to  create  a  blast.  Water  and  coke  were 
carried  on  a  separate  tender  on  two  wheels,  coupled 
to  the  rear  of  the  engine.  Spare  tenders,  filled,  were 
kept  in  readiness  at  different  stations  on  the  road. 


PIONEER  INVENTORS 

These  tenders,  mounted  upon  springs,  had  seats  back 
and  front  for  passengers.  To  work  the  locomotive 
three  persons  were  required,  a  steersman  on  the  front 
seat,  an  engineer  on  the  back  seat  outside  above  the 
engines,  and  a  fireman  stationed  on  the  footplate  in 
front  of  the  boiler. 

On  the  order  of  the  Steam  Carriage  Company,  of 
Scotland,  six  of  these  coaches  were  built  by  the 
Grove  House  Engine  Works,  of  Edinburgh.  They 
were  substantially  constructed  and  very  elaborately 
fitted  up.  As  was  said  at  the  time,  they  were  "in 
the  style  and  with  all  the  comfort  and  elegance  of 
the  most  costly  gentleman's  carriage."  They  ran 
very  successfully  for  some  time,  during  1834,  be- 
tween St.  George's  Square,  Glasgow,  and  Paisley. 
There  was  a  service  of  six  coaches  once  an  hour. 
Each  carriage  accommodated  six  passengers  inside 
and  twenty  outside,  and  sometimes  drew,  in  addi- 
tion, a  dogcart  laden  with  six  passengers,  and  the 
necessary  fuel  and  water.  These  dogcarts  were 
used  as  relays  on  the  road,  being  kept  ready  con- 
stantly. Public  opposition  to  these  coaches  devel- 
oped here  as  it  had  done  in  London  about  the  same 
period.  Road  trustees  objected  to  them  on  the 
ground  that  they  wore  out  the  roads  too1  rapidly. 
Obstructions  of  stones,  logs  of  wood,  and  other 
things  were  placed  in  their  way,  but  the  coaches  gen- 
erally went  on  in  spite  of  these.  Ordinary  horse- 
drawn  road  carriages  were  more  damaged  and  hin- 
dered than  the  Russell  coaches,  and  even  heavy  carts 
were  compelled  to  abandon  travel  on  the  obstructed 
roads  and  take  roundabout  courses,  greatly  to  the  dis- 
comfiture of  the  drivers. 

85 


AUTOMOBILE   BIOGRAPHIES 

One  day,  however,  a  heavy  strain,  unusually 
severe,  caused  by  jolting  over  the  rough  road,  broke 
a  wheel,  and  the  weight  of  the  coach  falling  on  the 
boiler  caused  an  explosion.  Five  persons  were 
killed,  and  as  a  result  of  this  accident  the  Court  of 
Session  interdicted  the  further  travel  of  these  car- 
riages in  Scotland.  The  Steam  Carriage  Company 
brought  an  action  for  damages  against  the  trustees 
of  the  turnpike  road  for  having  compelled  them  to 
withdraw  the  carriages  from  the  Glasgow  and  Pais- 
ley road  by  " wantonly,  wrongfully  and  maliciously 
accumulating  masses  of  metal,  stones  and  rubbish  on 
the  said  road,  in  order  to  create  such  annoyance  and 
obstruction  as  might  impede,  overturn,  or  destroy 
the  steam  coaches  belonging  to  the  plaintiffs,"  but 
nothing  seems  to  have  come  of  this  action. 

No  longer  used  in  Scotland,  two  of  Russell's 
coaches  were  sent  to  London.  There  they  were  en- 
gaged in  running  with  passengers  between  London 
and  Greenwich,  or  Kew  Bridge.  Several  trips  were 
made  to  Windsor.  After  about  a  year  they  were 
offered  for  sale,  and,  on  exhibition  preparatory  to 
sale,  they  started  every  day  from  Hyde  Park  Corner 
to  make  a  journey  to  Hammersmith.  But  they  re- 
mained unsold,  and  were  shortly  forgotten. 

Had  conditions  been  more  encouraging  Russell 
might  have  achieved  as  great  success  in  his  land  as 
in  his  water  vehicles.  He  was  a  man  of  rare  scien- 
tific attainments,  and  his  w^ork  in  ship  designing  and 
building  put  him  in  the  front  rank  of  naval  archi- 
tects and  builders  of  his  day.  In  addition  to  his 
work,  already  mentioned,  he  built  a  big  steamer  to 
transport  railway  trains  across  Lake  Constance. 
86 


PIONEER  INVENTORS 

W.  H.  CHURCH 

A  physician  of  Birmingham,  England,  Dr.  W.  H. 
Church  gave  many  years  to  the  study  of  steam  loco- 
motion. Several  patents  were  secured  by  him  be- 
tween 1832  and  1835,  and  in  the  latter  year  a 
common  road  carriage,  built  according  to  his  plans, 
was  brought  out. 

The  Church  vehicle  had  a  framework  of  united 
iron  plates  or  bars,  bolted  on  each  side  of  the  wood- 
work to  obtain  strength.  Well  trussed  and  braced, 
this  framework  enclosed  a  space  between  a  hind  and 
fore  body  of  the  carriage,  and  of  the  same  height  as 
the  latter,  and  contained  the  engine,  boiler,  and  other 
machinery.  The  boiler  consisted  of  a  series  of  ver- 
tical tubes,  placed  side  by  side,  through  each  of  which 
a  pipe  passed,  and  was  secured  at  the  bottom  of  the 
boiler  tube;  the  interior  pipe  constituted  the  flue, 
which  first  passed  in  through  a  boiler  tube,  and  was 
then  bent  like  a  syphon,  and  passed  down  another 
until  it  reached  as  low  or  lower  than  the  bottom  of 
the  fireplace,  whence  it  passed  off  into  a  general  flue 
in  communication  with  an  exhausting  apparatus. 
Two  fans  were  employed,  one  to  blow  in  air,  and 
the  other  to  draw  it  out ;  they  were  worked  by  straps 
from  the  crank  shaft.  The  wheels  of  the  carriage 
were  constructed  with  the  view  to  rendering  them 
elastic,  to  a  certain  degree,  in  two  different  ways : 
First,  the  felloes  were  made  of  several  successive 
layers  of  broad  wooden  hoops,  covered  with  a  thin 
iron  tire,  having  lateral  straps  to  bind  the  hoops  to- 
gether; second,  these  binding  straps  were  connected 
by  hinge  joints  to  a  kind  of  flat  steel  springs,  some- 
what curved,  which  formed  the  spokes  of  the  wheels. 
8? 


AUTOMOBILE   BIOGRAPHIES 

These  spring  spokes  were  intended  to  obviate  the 
necessity,  in  a  great  measure,  of  the  ordinary  springs, 
and  the  elasticity  of  the  periphery  was  designed  so 
that  the  yielding  of  the  circle  should  prevent  the 
wheel  from  turning  without  propelling. 

Church  also  proposed,  in  addition  to  spring  fel- 
loes, spring  spokes,  and  the  ordinary  springs,  to  em- 
ploy air  springs,  and  for  that  purpose  provided  two  or 
more  cylinders,  made  fast  to  the  body  of  the  carriage, 
in  a  vertical  position,  closed  at  top,  and  furnished 
with  a  piston,  with  packing  similar  to  the  cap-leather 
packing  of  the  hydraulic  press.  This  piston  was 
kept  covered  \vith  oil,  to  preserve  it  in  good  order, 
and  a  piston  rod  connected  it  with  the  supporting 
frame  of  the  carriage.  Motion  was  communicated 
by  two  oscillating  steam  cylinders  suspended  on  the 
steam  and  exhaust  pipes  over  the  crank  shaft.  The 
crank  shaft  and  driving-wheel  axle  were  connected 
by  means  of  chains  passing  about  pitched  pulleys. 

To  introduce  the  Church  coach,  the  London  and 
Birmingham  Steam  Carriage  Company  was  organ- 
ized. The  first  carriage  built  for  the  company  was 
an  imposing  vehicle,  something  like  a  big  circus  van, 
elaborately  ornamented  and  with  a  large  spheroidal 
wheel  in  front.  It  carried  about  forty  passengers  on 
top,  in  omnibus  fashion,  and  the  driver  sat  on  a  raised 
seat  near  the  roof.  A  fair  rate  of  speed  was  main- 
tained, fifteen  miles  on  the  level,  but  the  boiler  was 
damaged,  and  horses  hauled  the  engine  back  to  the 
factory.  Other  carriages  wrere  subsequently  brought 
out,  but  they  all  failed  to  meet  the  requirements  of 
travel  on  the  rough  roads  that  existed  at  that  time  in 
England. 

88 


PIONEER  INVENTORS 

JEAN  JOSEPH  ETIENNE  LENOIR 

Born  at  Mussy-la-Ville,  Luxembourg,  January  12, 
1822.  Died,  July,  1900,  at  La  Varnne  Chemevieves, 
near  Paris. 

When  Lenoir  came  to  Paris  in  1838  he  had  but  an 
ordinary  education  and  was  without  resources.  For 
a  time  he  served  as  a  waiter  in  order  to  earn  money 
to  become  an  enameler  and  decorator.  In  1847,  ne 
invented  a  new  white  enamel  and  four  years  after 
invented  a  galvano  plastic  process  for  raised  work. 
Many  other  inventions  were  made  by  him,  among 
them  being  an  electric  motor  in  1856,  a  water  meter 
in  1857,  an  automatic  regulator  for  dynamos,  the 
well-known  gas  motor  that  bears  his  name,  and  a  sys- 
tem of  autographic  telegraphing. 

It  is  claimed  that  in  September,  1863,  Lenoir  put 
a  gas  engine  of  his  non-compressor  type,  of  one  and 
a  half  horse-power,  on  wheels  and  made  an  experi- 
mental run  to  Joinville-le- Paris  and  back.  The  motor, 
running  at  one  hundred  revolutions,  it  is  said,  took 
them  there  in  one  and  a  half  hours.  He  thereupon 
abandoned  such  trials,  and  tried  his  engines  in  a  boat, 
and  in  1865  Put  a  s'lx  horse-power  in  one,  but  the 
insignificant  speed  possible  with  his  engine  caused 
him  to  abandon  that  also. 

The  Academy  of  Science  of  Paris  decorated  M. 
Lenoir  and  the  Society  of  Encouragement  gave  him 
the  grand  prize  of  Argenteuil,  amounting  to  twelve 
thousand  francs.  For  his  patriotic  services  at  the 
siege  of  Paris,  during  the  Franco-Prussian  war,  he 
was  made  a  naturalized  Frenchman.  In  1880,  he 
published  in  Paris  a  work  treating  of  his  researches 
into  the  tanning  of  leather. 


AUTOMOBILE  BIOGRAPH  IES 

AMEDEE  BOLLEE 

In  April,  1873,  Amedee  Bollee,  of  Le  Mans, 
France,  the  noted  French  engineer,  filed  a  patent  for 
a  steam  road  vehicle  and  two  years  later  he  built  the 
steam  stage  that  he  named  Obeissante.  Toward  the 
end  oi  that  year  this  stage  was  run  in  and  about 
Paris,  where  it  created  something  of  a  sensation.  It 
was  even  chronicled  in  the  songs  of  the  day  and  was 
made  a  topic  of  amusement  at  the  variety  theatres. 
This  steam  omnibus  made  twenty-eight  kilometers 
in  an  hour.  It  is  claimed  to  have  been  the  first  crea- 
tion of  the  man  to  whose  family  much  credit  is  due 
for  the  modern  French  automobile. 

Between  1873  and  I^75,  Bollee  made  several  car- 
riages. In  1876,  he  worked  with  Dalifol  and  made  a 
tram-car  that  would  carry  fifty  passengers.  This 
vehicle  was  put  into  the  steam  omnibus  service  in 
Rouen.  Two  years  later  he  made  another  steam 
omnibus  that  he  called  La  Mancelle.  This  vehicle, 
in  June  of  that  year,  was  run  from  Paris  to  Vienna 
and  developed  a  speed  on  level  roads  of  twenty-two 
miles  an  hour.  In  Vienna  this  vehicle  was  the  sub- 
ject of  much  talk  and  was  largely  caricatured. 

In  1880,  Bollee  built  another  omnibus,  La  Nou- 
velle.  This  vehicle  was  entered  in  the  Paris-Bor- 
deaux competition  in  1895,  and  was  the  only  steam 
carriage  that  covered  the  course  in  that  race.  Bollee 
has  been  a  conspicuous  exponent  of  the  steam  car- 
riage in  France  from  the  time  he  commenced  as  far 
back  as  1873.  The  vehicles  that  he  has  built  were 
in  many  instances  pioneers  in  their  class,  and  have 
been  exceedingly  serviceable  and  successful.  They 
have  made  the  name  of  Bollee  notable. 
90 


PIONEER  INVENTORS 

GEORGE  B.  SELDEN 

Born  in  the  fifties,  George  B.  Selden  came  of  a 
family  of  jurists,  whose  ancestors  were  early  Con- 
necticut settlers.  Among  them  were  several  eminent 
scientific  men.  His  father,  Henry  Rogers  Selden, 
was  born  in  Lyme,  Conn.,  October  14,  1805,  and 
died  in  Rochester,  N.  Y.,  September  18,  1885;  was 
Judge  of  the  Supreme  Court  of  the  State  of  New 
York,  and  is  still  remembered  by  men  of  that  genera- 
tion as  one  of  the  most  accomplished  lawyers  and 
jurists  who  occupied  that  bench  in  the  last  century. 

George  B.  Selden  attended  Yale  University,  and 
while  equipping  himself  for  his  legal  career,  fol- 
lowing in  the  footsteps  of  his  father,  indulged  his 
natural  predilection  for  scientific  work.  While 
practicing  law  in  Rochester,  N.  Y.,  he  devoted  much 
time  to  the  problem  of  self-propelled  vehicles  on  com- 
mon roads,  in  which,  as  early  as  the  sixties,  he  was 
then  interested.  The  study  of  this  art  led  to  a  very 
full  analysis  of  the  possibilities  of  different  means  of 
propulsion,  with,  as  a  result,  the  conclusion  that  the 
light,  liquid  hydrocarbon  concussion  engine  must 
eventually  fill  the  exacting  requirements  of  road 
vehicles.  His  further  experimenting  that  was  car- 
ried on  during  the  seventies,  and  the  actual  construct- 
ing, so  convinced  him  in  hisdeductions  that  the  record 
is  found  in  the  United  States  Patent  Office  of  his 
filing  an  application  for  patent  in  May,  1879,  with  a 
Patent  Office  model  of  his  gasoline  vehicle.  For  more 
details,  reference  must  be  made  to  his  patent,  No. 
549160,  subsequently  issued  in  November,  1895. 
Thereafter  in  a  general  report  treating  of  impor- 
tant and  leading  inventions  in  various  fields  this  was 
91 


AUTOMOBILE   BIOGRAPHIES 

referred  to  by  the  Commissioner  of  Patents  as  the 
pioneer  patent  in  its  class. 

Of  Selden's  voluminous  and  persistent  work  and 
his  many  engines  and  models  more  detailed  informa- 
tion cannot  be  here  given.  His  fundamental  patent 
at  present  is  involved  in  extensive  litigation,  al- 
though it  is  recognized  by  manufacturers  of  gasoline 
vehicles  who*,  to-day,  are  producing  from  eighty  to 
ninety  per  cent  of  the  output  of  the  United  States. 
Of  his  work  along  the  lines  of  improvements  in  de- 
tails of  his  main  invention,  the  gasoline  automobile 
per  sc,  and  kindred  matters  all  of  which  have  or  will 
have  a  great  bearing  upon  automobile  construction 
and  operation,  it  is  riot  at  this  time  possible  to  dwell 
at  length. 

Selden  is  known  as  an  exceedingly  able  attorney 
in  his  specialty,  while  his  active  connection  with  the 
extensive  reaper  and  binder  litigation,  in  all  of  which 
he  appeared  prominently,  established  for  him  an  en- 
viable reputation.  Those  who  have  had  the  privilege 
of  a  closer  personal  acquaintance  know  of  his  great 
fund  of  scientific  knowledge  in  various  arts,  as  well 
as  his  most  interesting  accumulations  of  data  as  a 
result  of  his  personal  researches. 

Selden  is  a  patentee  in  other  fields  beside  that  of 
the  gasoline  automobile  and  his  achievements  have 
been  numerous  and  of  exceeding  importance.  He  is 
also  a  chemist  of  more  than  ordinary  ability  and  has 
applied  himself  as  a  close  student  to  this  line  of  scien- 
tific investigation.  As  a  result  he  has  made  notable 
discoveries  that,  although  not  yet  given  to  the  world, 
will,  it  is  confidently  believed  by  those  acquainted 
with  them,  prove  to  be  of  the  greatest  scientific  value. 
92 


SIEGFRIED  MARCUS 


PIONEER  INVENTORS 

SIEGFRIED  MARCUS 

Marcus  was  an  ingenious  mechanic.  In  early  life 
he  made  dental  instruments  and  apparatus  for  a 
magician  in  Vienna.  For  his  construction  of  a 
thermopile  he  received  a  prize  and  to  his  further 
credit  as  an  inventor  are  placed  an  arc  lamp,  Rhum- 
koff  coil  carbureter,  a  high  candle-power  petroleum 
lamp,  magneto-electro  machines,  a  microphone  and 
various  other  things  in  many  branches  of  science. 

It  is  claimed  that  about  the  middle  seventies  of  the 
last  century  he  carried  on  experiments  with  a  gas 
engine  that  had  a  spring-connected  piston  rod.  He 
mounted  this  vertically  on  an  ordinary  horse  vehicle 
arid  connected  it  directly  with  a  cranked  rear  axle, 
carrying  two  flywheels  in  place  of  the  regular  road 
wheels.  He  is  said  to  have  made  trials  of  this  vehi- 
cle at  night  in  Vienna.  If  this  was  so  he  was  ap- 
parently trying  to  keep  his  plan  secret  and  succeeded 
very  well.  Aside  from  general  references  nothing  of 
importance  revealed  itself  concerning  this  vehicle 
and  Marcus'  experiments  with  it,  until  very  recently 
when  interest  in  the  historic  development  of  the  auto- 
mobile has  stimulated  anew  investigation  into  the 
endeavors  of  the  early  inventors. 

In  1882  the  motor  work  of  Marcus  was  principally 
preparatory  to  his  new  engine  construction.  It  in- 
cluded experimenting  with  an  Otto  engine  run  with 
petroleum  and  a  vaporizer  and  electric  ignition  with 
magneto.  In  1883  he  constructed  a  closed  or  two- 
cyckd  motor  and  thereafter  had  engines  made  in 
Budapest  and  elsewhere.  One  of  these  motors  he  put 
on  wheels,  but  this  was  abandoned  for  other  ideas 
that  came  from  his  fertile  mind. 
93 


AUTOMOBILE  BIOGRAPHIES 

CARL  BENZ 

Born,  November  26,  1844,  at  Karlsruhe,  Baden, 
Germany. 

The  early  education  of  Carl  Benz  was  acquired  at 
the  Lyceum  until  his  seventeenth  year  and  then  at 
the  Technical  High  School  of  his  native  city  for 
four  more  years.  This  was  followed  by  three  years 
of  practical  work  in  the  shops  of  the  Karlsruhe  Ma- 
chine Works.  When  he  was  twenty-eight  years  of 
age,  in  1872,  after  further  experience  in  Mannheim, 
Pforzheim  and  Vienna,  he  opened  workshops  of  his 
own  in  Mannheim. 

In  1880  he  began  to  commercialize  a  two-cycle 
stationary  engine.  In  1883  he  organized  his  busi- 
ness as  Benz  &  Co.,  and  produced  his  first  vehicle  in 
1884.  In  the  beginning  of  1885  his  three-wheeled 
vehicle  ran  through  the  streets  of  Mannheim,  Ger- 
many, attracting  much  attention  with  its  noisy  ex- 
haust. This  was  the  subject  of  his  patent  dated 
January  29,  1886,  claimed  by  him  to  be  the  first 
German  patent  on  a  light  oil  motor  vehicle.  This 
embodied  a  horizontal  flywdieel  belt  transmission 
through  a  differential  and  two  chains  to  the  wheels ; 
but  it  is  noteworthy  primarily  as  having  embodied 
a  four-cycle,  water  jacketed,  three-quarter  horse- 
power engine,  with  electric  ignition. 

In  1888,  the  Benz  Company  exhibited  their  vehi- 
cles at  the  Munich  Exposition,  where  they  attracted 
wide  attention.  This  was  followed  by  the  exhibition 
at  the  Paris  show  in  1889,  by  the  engineer  Roger,  of 
another  vehicle  made  under  license  that  Roger  had 
acquired  from  Benz  and  constructed  by  Panhard 
and  Levassor. 

94 


CARL  BENZ 


c  r    r     r       o 


PIONEER  INVENTORS 

While  in  1899  the  firm  was  converted  into  a  stock 
company  of  three  million  marks  capital,  and  then 
employed  three  hundred  men,  Carl  Benz  remained 
the  leading  spirit  of  the  concern,  technically,  while 
the  commercial  work  came  under  the  direction  of 
Julius  Ganz.  The  able  co-operation  of  these  two  has 
established  the  world-famous  automobile  enterprise 
looked  upon  by  many  as  the  pioneer  producing  works 
of  its  kind  in  Germany.  Of  late  years  motor  boats 
have  also  been  made  by  them,  but  their  automobiles 
and  those  of  their  affiliated  companies  or  licensees 
in  other  countries  still  stand  in  the  first  rank. 
GOTTLIEB  DAIMLER 

Born  at  Schorndorf,  Wurtemburg,  March  17, 
1834.  Died  at  Cannstadt,  near  Stuttgart,  March  6, 
1899. 

After  receiving  a  technical  and  scientific  training 
at  the  Polytechnic  School  at  Stuttgart,  1852-59, 
Daimler  spent  two  years,  1861-63,  as  an  engineer  in 
the  Karlsruhe  Machine  Works,  becoming  foreman 
there.  In  1872  he  entered  the  Gas  Engine  Works  at 
Deutz,  near  Cologne,  and  became  director  of  that 
establishment.  Within  ten  years  that  shop,  better 
known  as  the  Otto  Engine  Wrorks,  grew  from  a 
small  place  into  a  large,  well-organized  and  famous 
establishment.  In  1882  he  removed  to  Cannstadt  to 
give  his  entire  attention  to'  the  light-weight  internal- 
combustion  auto  motor,  with  which  his  career  was 
so  completely  identified,  and  the  successful  applica- 
tion of  which  earned  for  him  the  title,  "the  father 
of  the  automobile,"  in  Germany,  though  that  is,  in 
fact,  contested  by  those  familiar  with  the  work  of 
Benz. 

95 


AUTOMOBILE  BIOGRAPHIES 

Instead  of  using  the  uncertain-acting  flame  with 
the  inconvenient  speed  limitations,  Daimler  invented 
and  introduced  in  1883  the  so-called  hot-tube  igni- 
tion. This  consisted  of  a  metal  or  porcelain  tube 
attached  to  the  compression  space  of  the  cylinder 
in  such  a  manner  that  the  interior  of  the  tube  was  in 
continual  communication  with  the  compression 
space.  A  gas  flame,  continually  burning  under  the 
tube,  maintained  it  at  a  glowing  red  heat,  so  that 
the  mixed  charge  of  air  and  gas,  when  compressed 
into  the  tube,  became  fully  and  effectively  ignited. 
Experience  showed  that  by  a  proper  regulation  of  the 
temperature  of  the  hot  tube  the  ignition  could  be 
made  to  take  place  at  any  desired  point  in  the  com- 
pression, and  thus  the  complicated,  slow  and  uncer- 
tain slide  flame  ignition  was  replaced  by  a 
simple  device,  without  moving  parts,  altogether 
satisfactory  and  reliable.  The  especial  feature 
of  the  hot-tube  ignition,  however,  was  soon 
found  to  he  the  increased  speed  which  it  per- 
mitted. By  its  use  the  rotative  speed  could  be  in- 
creased eight  to  ten  times  over  the  older  motor,  and 
hence  the  weight  could  be  reduced  in  nearly  the  same 
proportion. 

This  fact  at  once  showed  Daimler  that  the  applica- 
tion of  the  internal-combustion  motor  to  mechanically 
propelled  vehicles  had  become  a  possibility,  and  that, 
with  the  use  of  hydro-carbon  vapor  as  fuel,  and  the 
high-speed  hot-tube  motor,  the  petroleum  automobile 
might  become  a  practical  possibility.  He  therefore 
severed  his  connection  with  the  Otto'  Engine  Works 
at  Deutz,  and  returning  to  Cannstadt,  near  Stuttgart, 
his  early  home,  he  devoted  his  entire  time  and  atten- 


GOTTLIEB  DAIMLER 


PIONEER  INVENTORS 

tion  to  the  design  of  a  light  petroleum  motor  and 
motor  vehicle.  The  result  was  the  production,  in 
1885,  of  a  motor-bicycle,  in  which  the  motor  was 
placed  directly  under  the  seat,  between  the  legs  of 
the  rider.  The  petroleum  was  drawn  from  a  tank, 
the  supply  being  regulated  by  the  valve.  The  motor 
was  first  set  in  motion  by  lighting  a  lamp  and  turn- 
ing the  crank  a  few  times,  the  discharge  passing 
through  the  chamber  into  an  exhaust-pipe.  After 
the  motor  had  been  fully  started,  the  vehicle  was 
set  in  motion  by  moving  a  lever,  which  drew  a  tight- 
ening pulley  against  the  belt,  and  so  caused  the  power 
to  be  transmitted  from  the  shaft  pulley  to  the  wheel 
pulley.  Changes  of  speed  were  attained  by  using 
pulleys  of  different  sizes,  similar  to  the  cone  pulleys 
on  a  lathe.  This  machine  was  put  into  successful 
action  at  Cannstadt  on  November  10,  1885. 

An  interesting  feature  in  connection  with  the 
Daimler  motor  is  the  arrangement  of  the  cooling- 
water  circulation  for  the  cylinder  jacket.  The  water 
is  contained  in  a  tank,  from  which  it  is  circulated  in 
the  cylinder  jacket  by  means  of  a  small  rotary  pump. 
From  the  jacket  it  passes  to  the  cooler.  This  con- 
sists of  a  system  of  several  hundred  small  tubes  over 
which  a  blast  of  air  is  driven  by  a  fan  operated  from 
the  motor  shaft.  Since  the  speed  of  the  fan  increases 
with  the  speed  of  the  motor,  the  cooling  is  propor- 
tional to  the  production  of  heat  in  the  cylinder. 

In  addition  to  gas,  which  is  applicable  for  sta- 
tionary motors  only,  the  fuel  may  be  benzine  of  a 
specific  gravity  of  sixty-eight  or  seventy  one-hun- 
dredths,  or  ordinary  lamp  petroleum.  The  consump- 
tion varies  according  to  the  size  of  the  motor,  rang- 
97 


AUTOMOBILE  BIOGRAPHIES 

ing  from  thirty-six  to  forty-five  one-hundredths  kilo- 
grams per  horse-power  hour  for  vehicles,  or  some- 
what less  for  boats.  He  adapted  these  light  motors 
to  vehicles  of  many  styles,  and  his  persistent  work 
in  this  connection  has  made  the  world-wide  reputa- 
tion of  the  Daimler  Motoren  Gesellschaft,  now  flour- 
ishing at  Cannstadt,  Germany. 

In  1888-89  the  French  interest  in  the  light  motors 
led  to  their  adoption  by  Panhard  and  Levassor.  The 
type  then  developed  and  known  as  Phenix  motors, 
were  soon  copied  in  part  at  least  by  many  other 
French  makers,  resulting  in  a  modified  form  there 
known  as  the  Pygmee.  Work  at  Cannstadt  pro- 
gressed steadily,  however,  and  many  pleasure  vehicles 
were  made  as  well  as  small  boats. 

The  able  assistance  of  William  Maybach  brought 
further  credit  to  the  company,  particularly  in  view 
of  the  aspirating  carbureter  which,  with  such  de- 
tails as  clutch  and  transmission  mechanism,  helped 
to  perfect  the  Cannstadt  automobiles.  In  the  latter 
nineties  the  prominence  of  the  Daimler  Works  as 
vehicle  makers,  distinguished  from  motor  makers, 
again  began  to  be  noticed  and  soon  their  now  famous 
Mercedes  cars  appeared.  In  recent  years  these  ma- 
chines have  made  remarkable  records  in  races  and  all 
other  branches  of  the  sport.  With  a  magnificent  re- 
finement of  details  in  construction  they  are  to-day 
looked  upon  as  the  pleasure  vehicles  par  excellence. 

They  have  had  a  large  vogue  in  all  parts  of  Europe 
and  are  accepted  there  as  among  the  most  satisfac- 
tory vehicles  in  their  class  that  are  now  made.  Many 
of  them  have  been  brought  to  the  United  States, 
where  they  have  been  and  still  are  in  great  demand. 


LEVASSOR 


PIONEER  INVENTORS 
EVASSOR 

Born  at  Marolles,  in  Hurepoix  (Seine  and  Oise)r 
January  21,  1843.  Died,  April  14,  1897. 

Levassor  was  graduated  from  the  Central  School 
of  Arts  and  Manufactures,  Paris,  in  1864.  He  was 
employed  as  an  engineer  at  the  CocKerill  Works  at 
Seriang,  Belgium,  and  also  with  Durenne  at  Cour- 
bevoie,  near  Paris.  In  1872  he  entered  the  firm  of 
Perrin  &  Panhard,  the  name  of  the  concern  being 
changed  to  Perrin,  Panhard  &  Co.  Upon  the  death 
of  M.  Perrin,  he  became  the  junior  partner  and  the 
name  of  Panhard  &  Levassor  was  adopted.  When 
Levassor  died  in  1897,  the  corporation  of  Panhard 
&  Levassor  was  formed. 

Levassor  made  many  improvements  in  the  ma- 
chinery and  output  of  Panhard  &  Levassor.  Espe- 
cially lie  perfected  machines  for  wood-working  and 
made  important  changes  in  the  processes  used  for 
the  cold  cutting  of  hard  metals.  On  the  first  ap- 
pearance of  gas  motors  he  undertook  their  construc- 
tion in  France.  It  was  in  the  establishment  of  Pan- 
hard  &  Levassor  that  the  first  motors  were  con- 
structed under  the  system  of  Otto  and  Langen  with 
atmospheric  pressure,  then  the  four-cycle  engine  of 
Otto  and  finally  the  two-cycle  system  of  Benz  and 
Ravell. 

In  1886,  when  the  Daimler  petroleum  motor  ap- 
peared, he  recognized  the  great  part  that  it  would 
play  in  practical  application  to  the  propulsion  of 
vehicles  and  boats.  He  acquired  the  right  to  use  it 
in  France,  and  in  1887  exhibited,  in  Paris,  a  boat 
thus  propelled.  After  several  years  he  put  forth  the 
first  automobile  vehicle  with  motor  in  front. 
99 


AUTOMOBILE  BIOGRAPHIES 

LEON  SERPOLLET 

Serpollet  is  noted  in  France  to-day  as  the  cham- 
pion of  the  steam  automobile.  In  1887,  he  appeared 
in  Paris  with  his  three-wheeler,  two  rear  drive  and 
one  front  steering  wheel.  With  its  light  and  safe 
generator  his  machine  attracted  much  attention,  but 
its  use  in  the  streets  of  the  capital  was  temporarily 
prohibited,  until  the  granting  to  him  in  1891  of  the 
first  unrestricted  license  for  such  use  resulted  from 
his  initiation  of  the  prefect  of  police  by  driving  that 
important  personage  in  the  steamer. 

His  generator,  known  as  the  "flash  boiler,"  has 
been  developed  to  a  high  state  of  perfection.  The 
tubes  of  his  boiler  were  heavy,  flattened  tubing, 
strengthened  in  that  form  by  being  transversally 
bent  or  grooved.  He  was  helped  doubtless  to  no 
small  extent,  in  his  work,  by  his  association,  about 
1897,  with  a  wealthy  American,  F.  L.  Gardner,  who 
made  possible  the  development  of  the  large  Gardner- 
Serpollet  establishment  in  the  Rue  Stendhal,  Paris. 

While  Serpollet  has  achieved  a  brilliant  and  well- 
deserved  reputation  in  his  native  land,  he  is  also 
recognized  in  other  countries  as  one  of  the  greatest 
living  promoters  of  the  steam  branch  of  the  auto- 
mobile industry.  His  adherence  to  steam  as  the 
motive  power  in  self-propelled  road  vehicles  has  been 
unremitting  and  energetic,  Few  men  have  done  more 
than  he  to  improve  carriages  in  this  class. 

In  1900,  Serpollet  was  made  a  Chevalier  of  the 
Legion  of  Honor.  His  sales  to  that  date  of  five 
machines  for  the  Shah  of  Persia  and  landaulets  for 
the  Maharajah  of  Mysore  and  other  notables  had 
given  him  much  prominence  at  that  time. 

100 


LEON  SERPOLLET 


PIONEER  INVENTORS 

Louis  AND  MARCEL  RENAULT 

Born  in  Boulogne,  France,  the  Renault  Brothers, 
with  general  technical  education,  perseverance  and 
ability,  entered  the  field  of  automobile  manufactur- 
ing only  some  six  years  ago,  although  they  earlier 
gave  to  the  subject  much  attention  and  study. 

Having  appreciated  through  personal  experience 
-the  shortcomings  of  the  gasoline  tricycle,  Louis  Re- 
nault in  October,  1898,  manufactured,  in  his  private 
shop,  a  small  two-passenger  vehicle,  with  a  one  and 
three-quarters  horse-power  motor,  which  eliminated 
the  pedalling  for  starting,  but  was  otherwise  small 
and  light  as  a  tricycle.  In  January,  1899,  he  brought 
out  a  small  four-wheeler  with  one  and  three-quarters 
horse-power  motor  in  front,  three  speeds  and  chain- 
less,  or  as  now  called  propeller  drive.  The  demand 
was  immediate  and  large  and  resulted  in  the  estab- 
lishment of  the  works  of  Renault  Freres,  who  began 
to  make  the  first  lot  of  these  small  vehicles  in  March 
of  the  same  year.  These  won  prizes  in  the  Paris- 
Trouville,  the  Ostende  and  the  Rambouillet  runs,  and 
one  completed  a  three  thousand  six  hundred  kilo- 
meter tour  through  different  parts  of  Europe  and 
over  the  Alps. 

The  new  model  of  1900  had  a  three  and  one-half 
horse-power  motor  and  thermo-syphon  cooling  sys- 
tem. Many  honors  were  won  with  these,  and  nota- 
bly that  o>f  Louis  Renault's  most  successful  use  of 
one  in  the  grand  army  maneuvers.  But  the  output 
of  three  hundred  and  fifty  showed  the  necessity  for 
larger  works.  With  the  increased  facilities  of  1901, 
the  product  was  doubled  and  the  model  increased  to 
four  and  one-half  horse-power,  while  eight  and  nine 
IOI 


AUTOMOBILE  BIOGRAPHIES 

horse-power  were  winners  in  the  Paris-Bordeaux  and 
Paris-Berlin  races. 

In  1902  came  another  addition  to  the  Billancourt 
works  of  Cloise  to  four  thousand  square  meters  area, 
and  the  Renault  Brothers  then  changed  their  models 
to  voiture  legere,  six  to  eight  horse-power,  steel  tube 
frame  and  wood  wheels — a  full-fledged  vehicle. 
They  succeeded  in  the  Circuit  du  Nord,  organized  by 
the  Minister  of  Agriculture,  for  alcohol-motored 
vehicles.  Then  came  the  triumph  of  their  twenty 
horse-power  four-cylinder  type  in  the  great  Paris- 
Vienna  race,  where  it  was  pitted  against  forty  and 
even  seventy  horse-power  vehicles.  The  result  was 
a  great  impetus  commercially,  and  new  shops  accom- 
modating a  thousand  workmen  and  covering  thirteen 
thousand,  square  meters,  which  produced  one  thou- 
sand four  hundred  vehicles  in  the  following  year. 

Both  brothers,  who  had  always  been  at  the  wheel 
of  their  own  cars  in  the  years  of  racing,  entered  the 
memorable  "race-of-death,"  Paris-Madrid,  in  May, 
1903.  Louis  arrived  first  at  Bordeaux,  but  his  un- 
fortunate brother  Marcel,  while  close  to  victory,  was 
killed  with  the  overturning  oi  his  machine  only  a  few 
kilometers  from  the  goal.  In  memory  of  Marcel 
Renault  a  simple  monument  was  unveiled  at  Billan- 
court May  26,  1904,  on  ground  contributed  by  the 
municipal  council;  a  bronze  plate  on  one  side  of 
this  perpetuates  his  triumphant  entry  into  Vienna, 
showing  his  arrival  at  the  finish. 

Louis  Renault,  since  continuing  the  business,  has 
now  produced  larger  machines,  including  the  sixty 
to  ninety  horse-power  made  for  the  Vanderbilt  race 
in  America,  October,  1904. 
102 


MARCEL  RENAULT 


NOTED  INVESTIGATORS 


NOTED  INVESTIGATORS 

SIMON  STEVIN, 
THOMAS  WILDGOSSE, 
DAVID  RAMSEY, 
JOHANN  HAUTSCH, 
CHRISTIAAN  HUYGENS, 
STEPHEN  FARFLEUR, 
FERNANDO  VERBIEST, 
ISAAC  NEWTON, 
VEGELIUS, 
ELIE  RICHARD, 

GOTTFRIED  WILHELM  VON  LEIBNITZ, 
HUMPHREY  MACKWORTH, 
DENIS  PAPIN, 
VAUCAUSON, 
ROBINSON, 
ERASMUS  DARWIN, 
RICHARD  LOVELL  EDGEWORTH, 
FRANCIS  MOORE, 
PLANTA, 
J.  S.  KESTLER, 
BLANCHARD, 

THOMAS  CHARLES  AUGUSTE  DALLERY, 
JAMES  WATT, 
ROBERT  FOURNESS, 
GEORGE  MEDHURST, 
ANDREW  VIVIAN, 
105 


AUTOMOBILE  BIOGRAPHIES 

Du  QUET, 
J.  H.  GENEVOIS, 
JOHN  DUMBELL, 
WILLIAM  BRUNTON, 
THOMAS  TINDALL, 
JOHN  BAYNES, 
JULIUS  GRIFFITHS, 
EDMUND  CARTWRIGHT, 
T.  BURTSALL, 
T.  W.  PARKER, 
GEORGE  POCOCK, 
SAMUEL/BROWN, 
JAMES  NEVILLE, 
T.  S.  HOLLAND, 
JAMES  NASMYTH, 

F.  ANDREWS, 
HARLAND, 
PECQUEUR, 
JAMES  VINEY, 
CHEVALIER  BORDINO, 
CLIVE, 

SUMMERS  AND  OGLE, 

GIBBS, 

CHARLES  DANCE, 

JOSHUA  FIELD, 

DIETZ, 

YATES, 

G.  MILLICHAP, 

JAMES  CALEB  ANDERSON, 
ROBERT  DAVIDSON, 
W.  G.  HEATON, 
1 06 


NOTED   INVESTIGATORS 

F.  HILL, 
GOODMAN, 
NORRGBER, 

J.  K.  FISHER, 

R.  W.  THOMPSON, 

ANTHONY  BERNHARD, 

BATTIN, 

RICHARD  DUDGEON, 

LOUGH  AND  MESSENGER, 

THOMAS  RICKETT, 

DANIEL  ADAMSON, 

STIRLING, 

W.  O.  CARRETT, 

RICHARD  TANGYE, 

T.  W.  COWAN, 

CHARLES  T.  HAYBALL, 

ISAAC  W.  BOULTON, 

ARMSTRONG, 

PIERRE  RAVEL, 

L.  T.  PYOTT, 

A.  RlCHTER, 

RAFFARD, 

CHARLES  JEANTEAUD, 

SYLVESTER  HAYWOOD  ROPER, 

COPELAND. 

G.  BOUTON, 
COUNT  A.  DE  DION, 
ARM  AND  PEUGEOT, 
RADCLIFFE  WARD, 
MORS, 

MAGNUS  VOLK, 
.107 


AUTOMOBILE  BIOGRAPHIES 

BUTLER, 

LL  BLANT, 

EMILE  DELAHAYE, 

ROGER, 

GEORGES  RICHARD, 

PocHAiN, 

Louis  KRIEGER, 

DE  DETRICH, 

DAVID  SALOMONS, 

LEON  BOLLEE, 

JOSEPH  GUEDON, 

RENE  DE  KNYFF, 

ADOLF  CLEMENT, 

A.  DARRACQ, 

JAMES  GORDON  BENNETT. 


108 


NOTED  INVESTIGATORS 

SIMON  STEVIN 

Born  in  Bruges,  Holland,  in  1548.  Died  in  1620. 
Stevin  was  a  noted  mathematician,  and  also  ex- 
perimented in  the  construction  of  wheel  vehicles  about 
1600.  He  built  in  his  workshop  at  The  Hague  a 
wheeled  vehicle  that  was  propelled  by  sails.  This 
was  simply  a  tray  or  boat  of  wood,  which  hung 
close  to  the  ground.  It  was  borne  on  four  wooden 
wheels,  each  one  of  which  was  five  feet  in  diameter, 
and  the  after-axle  was  pivoted  to  form  a  rudder. 
A  tall  mast  was  carried  amidships,  and  there  was  a 
small  foremast  that  was  stayed  aft.  Large  square 
sails  were  carried  on  these  masts.  A  trial  trip  of 
this  sailing  ship  on  land  was  made  in  1600,  when 
the  journey  from  Scheveningen  to>  Petten,  a  distance 
of  forty-two  miles,  was  made  in  about  two  hours. 
On  this  occasion  some  twenty-two  passengers  were 
carried.  Prince  Maurice  of  Holland  steered,  and 
among  the  passengers  were  Grotius,  and  the  Spanish 
Admiral,  Mendoza,  who  was  then  a  prisoner  of  war 
in  Holland. 

Stevin  also  built  a  smaller  sail  vehicle,  similar  to 
the  one  just  described,  that  carried  from  five  to 
eight  persons.  Both  carriages  were  used  a  great 
deal,  running  many  miles  on  the  Dutch  coast.  The 
smaller  one  was  to  be  seen  at  Scheveningen  as  late 
as  1802.  Grotius  wrote  a  poem  on  these  carriages. 
Bishop  Wilkens,  in  England,  also  wrote  about  them 
in  1648,  and  showed  a  drawing  that  was  made  from 
a  description  given  to  him  by  those  who  had  seen  the 
car  at  work.  Howell,  a  writer  of  the  period,  thus 
quaintly  described  the  Stevin  carriage:  "This  en- 
gine, that  hath  wheels  and  sails,  will  hold  above 
109 


AUTOMOBILE  BIOGRAPHIES 

twenty  people,  and  goes  with  the  wind,  being  drawn 
or  moved  by  nothing  else,  and  will  run,  the  wind 
being  good  and  the  sails  hois' d  up,  about  fifteen 
miles  an  hour  upon  the  even  hard  sands." 

THOMAS  WILDGOSSE 

In  1618,  Thomas  Wildgosse  got  out  a  patent  for 
"newe,  apte,  or  compendious  formes  or  kinds  of 
engines  or  instruments  to  ploughe  grounds  without 
horse  or  oxen ;  and  to  make  boates  for  the  carryage 
of  burthens  and  passengers  runn  upon  the  water  as 
swifte  in  calmes,  and  more  safe  in  stormes,  than 
boats  full  sayled  in  great  wynnes."  It  is  agreed  by 
the  best  authorities  that  these  vehicles  were  set  in 
motion  by  gear  worked  by  the  hand  of  a  driver,  al- 
though Fletcher  thinks  that  steam  engines  were  in- 
tended. Additional  patents  were  granted  to  Wild- 
gosse in  1625. 

DAVID  RAMSEY 

Associated  with  Thomas  Wildgosse  in  his  experi- 
menting and  patenting,  in  1618,  was  David  Ramsey, 
who  at  that  time  was  Page  of  the  Bed  Chamber  to 
James  I.  of  England,  and  afterwards  was  Groom  of 
the  Privy  Chamber  to  the  same  monarch.  In  1644, 
Ramsey  was  again  a  partner  in  the  grant  of  a  pat- 
ent for  "a  farre  more  easie  and  better  wave  for 
soweing  of  corne  and  grayne,  and  alsoe  for  the 
carrying  of  coaches,  carts,  drayes,  and  other  things 
goeing  on  wheels,  than  ever  yet  was  used  and 
discovered."  This  may  have  been  a  manually  or  a 
steam  propelled  vehicle.  It  is  most  reasonable  to 
suppose  that  it  was  the  former. 
no 


NOTED  INVESTIGATORS 

JOHANN  HAUTSCH 

Born  in  1595.     Died  in  1670. 

Hautsch  was  a  noted  mathematician,  and,  experi- 
menting in  the  construction  of  road  vehicles,  he 
built  a  mechanical  carriage  for  use  on  common 
roads.  This  carriage  was  successfully  run  in 
Nuremberg,  Germany,  in  1649,  and  thereafter  at- 
tracted a  great  deal  of  attention.  It  was  propelled 
by  a  train  of  gears  that  turned  the  axle,  being  ope- 
rated by  two  men  who,  secreted  in  the  interior  of 
the  body,  worked  cranks.  The  finish  of  the  body  of 
this  coach  was  very  elaborate,  being  heavily  carved 
and  having  fashioned  in  front  the  figure  of  a  dragon, 
arranged  to  roll  its  eyes  and  spout  steam  and  water, 
in  order  to  terrify  the  populace  and  clear  the  way. 
On  each  side  of  the  body  were  carved  angels  hold- 
ing trumpets,  which  were  constantly  blown,  the  pre- 
cursors, perhaps,  of  the  automobile  horns  of  to-day. 
The  Hautsch  coach  was  said  to  have  gone  as  rapidly 
as  one  thousand  paces  an  hour.  One  of  the  car- 
riages which  he  built  was  sold  to  the  Crown  Prince 
of  Sweden,  and  another  to  the  King  of  Denmark. 
Not  much  more  is  known  of  the  Hautsch  vehicles, 
but  it  is  a  matter  of  record  that  the  inventor  was 
preceded  by  one  whose  name  is  unknown,  but  who 
ran  a  coach,  mechanically  propelled  somewhat  like 
this  car,  in  January,  1447,  near  Nuremberg. 

CHRISTIAAN  HUYGENS 

Born  at  The  Hague,  Holland,  April  14,  1629. 
Died  at  The  Hague,  June  8,  1695. 

Huygens  received  a  good  education,  and  at  early 
age    showed  a  singular    aptitude  for    mathematics. 
in 


AUTOMOBILE   BIOGRAPHIES 

Soon  after  he  was  sixteen  years  of  age  he  prepared 
papers  on  mathematical  subjects  that  gave  him  pre- 
eminent distinction.  He  became  noted  as  a  physicist, 
astronomer  and  mathematician.  He  devoted  some 
time  to  the  consideration  of  improvements  in  road 
vehicular  travel. 

STEPHEN  FARFLUER 

Born  in  1663. 

Farfluer  was  a  contemporary  of  Johann  Hautsch, 
and  was  a  skillful  mechanician  of  Altderfanar,  Nu- 
remberg, Germany.  About  1650  he  made  a  dirigible 
vehicle  propelled  by  man  power,  but  as  distinguished 
from  that  of  his  rival,  Hautsch,  this  was  a  small  car- 
riage, being  calculated  only  for  one  person.  Being 
crippled,  Farfluer  used  the  wagon  as  his  only  means 
of  getting  about  alone.  It  had  hand  cranks  that 
drove  the  single  front  wheel  by  gears. 

FERNANDO  VERBIEST 

Born  near  Courtrai,  Belgium,  1623.  Died  in 
China  in  1688. 

Verbiest  became  a  Jesuit  missionary,  and  was  a 
man  of  marked  ability.  After  going  to  China  he 
acquired  a  thorough  knowledge  of  the  language  of 
that  country,  where  he  spent  the  greater  part  of  his 
life.  Under  his  Chinese  name  he  wrote  scientific 
and  theological  works  in  Chinese.  He  was  appointed 
astronomer  at  the  Pekin  observatory,  undertook  the 
reformation  of  the  Chinese  calendar,  superintended 
the  cannon  foundries,  and  was  a  great  favorite  of 
the  Emperor. 

About  1655  he  made  a  small  model  of  a  steam 
carriage.  This  is  described  in  the  English  edition 

112 


NOTED   INVESTIGATORS 

of  Hue's  Christianity  in  China,  in  Muirhead's  Life 
of  James  Watt,  and  in  the  Astronomia  Europia,  a 
work  that  is  attributed  to  Verbiest,  but  was  prob- 
ably compiled  from  his  works  by  another  Jesuit 
priest  and  was  published  in  Europe  in  1689.  The 
Verbiest  model  was  for  a  four-wheeled  carriage, 
on  which  an  aeolipile  was  mounted  with  a  pan  of 
burning  coals  beneath  it.  A  jet  of  steam  from  the 
aeolipile  impinged  upon  the  vanes  of  a  wheel  on  a 
vertical  axle,  the  lower  end  of  the  spindle  being 
geared  to  the  front  axle.  An  additional  wheel, 
larger  than  the  supporting  wheels,  was  mounted  on 
an  adjustable  arm  in  a  manner  to  adapt  the  vehicle 
to  moving  in  a  circular  path.  Another  orifice  in  the 
aeolipile  was  fitted  with  a  reed,  so  that  the  steam 
going  through  it  imitated  the  song  of  a  bird. 

ISAAC  NEWTON 

Born  at  Woolsthorpe,  Lincolnshire,  England, 
December  25,  1642.  Died  at  Kensington,  March 
20,  1727. 

Isaac  Newton,  who  became  one  of  the  greatest 
mathematicians  that  the  world  ever  knew,  was  the 
son  of  a  farmer.  He  was  educated  at  Trinity  Col- 
lege, Cambridge,  and  in  his  early  youth  he  mastered 
the  principles  of  mathematics,  as  then  known,  and 
began  original  investigations  to  discover  new  meth- 
ods. His  great  achievement  was  the  discovery  of 
the  law  of  universal  gravitation,  but  his  genius  was 
active  in  other  directions,  as  the  investigation  of  the 
nature  of  light,  the  construction  of  improved  tele- 
scopes, and  so  on.  He  was  a  Member  of  Parlia- 
ment in  1689  and  1701,  and  master  of  the  mint,  a 


AUTOMOBILE  BIOGRAPHIES 

lucrative  position,  from  1696  until  the  time  of  his 
death.  In  1671  he  was  elected  a  member  of  the 
Royal  Society,  and  was  annually  chosen  to  be  its 
president,  from  1703  until  his  death. 

Newton  was  one  of  the  first  Englishmen  to  con- 
ceive the  idea  of  the  propulsion  of  vehicles  by  the 
power  o<f  steam.  Taking  up  for  consideration 
Hero's  hollow  ball  filled  with  water  from  which 
steam  was  generated  by  the  outward  application  of 
heat,  he  added  these  conclusions :  "We  have  a  more 
sensible  effect  of  the  elasticity  of  vapors  if  the  hole 
be  made  bigger  and  stopped,  and  then  the  ball  be  laid 
upon  the  fire  till  the  water  boils  violently ;  after  this, 
if  the  ball  be  set  upon  little  wheels,  so  as  to  move 
easily  upon  a  horizontal  plane,  and  the  hole  be 
opened,  the  vapors  will  rush  out  violently  one  way, 
and  the  wheels  and  the  ball  at  the  same  time  will  be 
carried  the  contrary  way."  Beyond  this  philosophi- 
cal suggestion,  however,  Newton  never  went.  The 
steam  carriage  attributed  to  him  by  some  writers  is 
merely  an  imaginative  creation,  by  writer  or  artist, 
based  upon  the  above  proposition. 

VEGELIUS 

A  professor  at  Jena,  Saxony,  in  the  seventeenth 
century,  Vegelius  constructed,  in  1679,  a  mechanical 
horse,  which  was  propelled  by  springs  and  cased  in 
the  skin  of  a  real  horse.  This  machine  is  said  to  have 
traveled  four  German  miles  an  hour. 

ELIE  RICHARD 

Born  on  the  Island  of  Re  in  1645. 
A  physician  of  La  Rochelle,  France,  Elie  Richard 
was  a  man  of  science,  and  a  considerable  celebrity  in 
114 


NOTED  INVESTIGATORS 

his  day.  He  had  built,  in  1690,  a  dirigible  vehicle 
that  he  used  to  travel  about  in  on  his  professional 
work.  The  carriage  was  propelled  by  mechanism 
operated  by  a  man-servant  by  means  of  a  treadle. 
The  operator  was  placed  on  the  rear  of  the  carriager 
and  the  occupant,  seated  in  front,  steered  by  a  winch 
attached  to  a  small  wheel.  This  construction  was 
frequently  referred  to  by  contemporaries  of  Richard, 
and  even  later  on,  and  was  copied  by  others  during 
the  following  hundred  years  or  so. 

GOTTFRIED  WILHELM  VON  LEIBNITZ 

Born  at  Leipsic,  Germany,  July  6,  1646.  Died  at 
Hanover,  November  14,  1716. 

Leibnitz,  in  addition  to  his  work  as  a  philosopher 
and  mathematician,  was  also  interested  in  mechanics. 
He  gave  some  attention  to  the  study  of  the  possi- 
bility of  making  improvements  in  common  road 
vehicles,  and  he  endeavored  to  encourage,  though 
without  results,  his  contemporary,  Denis  Papin. 

HUMPHREY  MACKWORTH 

Born  in  1647.     Died  in  1727. 

A  celebrated  English  politician  and  capitalist,  Sir 
Humphrey  Mackworth  matriculated  at  Magdalene 
College,  Oxford,  December  IT,  1674.  He  was  en- 
tered at  the  Middle  Temple,  in  June,  1675,  and 
called  to  the  bar  in  1682.  In  1695  he  was  engaged 
in  developing  collieries  and  copper  and  smelting 
works  at  Melencryddan,  near  Neath,  Wales,  and  the 
improvements  introduced  by  him  there  were  of  the 
greatest  value.  Among  other  improvements  he  con- 
structed a  wagon-way  from  the  mines,  and  propelled 
his  coal-carrying  cars  by  sails. 


AUTOMOBILE  BIOGRAPHIES 

DENIS  PAPIN 

Born  at  Bloys,  France,  August  22,  1647.  Died  in 
England,  1712. 

Papin  was  a  son  and  nephew  of  a  physician.  He 
studied  medicine  in  Paris  and  practiced  for  some 
time,  attaining  distinction  in  his  profession.  A  pas- 
sion for  the  sciences,  mathematics  and  physics  drew 
him  away  from  medical  practice  and  he  became  skill- 
ful in  other  lines.  He  followed  assiduously  the  foot- 
steps of  Huygens  and  in  some  respects  became  a 
rival  of  his  master  in  original  thought  and  experi- 
menting and  in  professional  attainments. 

Papin  invented  in  1698  a  carriage  that  was  fitted 
with  a  steam  engine  as  such  is  now  understood ;  that 
is,  a  cylinder  and  a  piston.  This  was  probably  the 
first  vehicle  of  its  kind  known  in  Europe.  The  con- 
struction was  a  model  merely,  a  toy  which  ran 
around  the  room,  but  it  is  said  to  have  worked  well. 
Concerning  this  invention,  Papin  said :  "I  believe 
that  one  might  use  this  invention  for  other  things 
besides  raising  water.  I  have  made  a  little  model 
of  a  carriage  that  is  propelled  by  this  force.  I  have 
in  mind  what  I  can  do,  but  I  believe  that  the  uneven- 
ness  and  turns  of  the  highway  will  make  this  inven- 
tion very  difficult  to  perfect  for  carriages  or  road 
use."  Although  encouraged  to*  prosecute  his  work 
by  the  Baron  Gottfried  Wilhelm  von  Leibnitz,  his 
doubts  could  not  'be  overcome  in  regard  to  the  prac- 
ticability of  his  proposed  carriage.  He  still  claimed, 
however,  that  by  the  aid  of  such  vehicles,  infantry 
could  probably  be  moved  as  quickly  as  cavalry  and 
without  the  necessity  of  heavy  impedimenta  of  food 
and  other  supplies. 

116 


NOTED  INVESTIGATORS 

VAUCAUSON 

A  celebrated  French  mechanician,  Vaucauson,  in 
April,  1740,  built  a  vehicle  "to  go  without  horses." 
He  was  visited  at  his  palace  in  Rue  Charonne,  Paris, 
by  King  Louis  Fifteenth,  and  the  exhibition  of  this 
vehicle,  which,  according  to  reports,  was  propelled  by 
a  "simple  watch  spring,"  was  reviewed  in  a  journal 
of  the  time  as  follows : 

"Yesterday,  at  3  P.  M.  His  Majesty,  accompanied 
by  several  officers  and  high  court  functionaries,  re- 
paired to  the  palace  of  M.  Vaucauson  and  took  his 
seat  on  a  species  of  throne  specially  prepared  for  his 
reception  on  a  raised  platform,  whence  he  could 
clearly  discern  all  the  mechanism  of  the  carriage  in 
its  gyrations  through  the  avenues  and  alleys.  The 
vehicle  would  seat  two  persons,  and  was  painted 
scarlet,  bordered  in  blue,  ornamented  with  much 
gilding;  the  axle  trees  of  the  wheels  were  provided 
with  brakes  and  set  in  motion  by  a  fifth  wheel,  like- 
wise well  braked  and  bound  with  long  ribbons  of  in- 
dented steel.  Two  chains  communicated  with  a  re- 
volving lever  in  the  hands  of  the  conductor,  who 
could  at  will  start  or  stop  the  carriage  without  need 
of  horses.  His  Majesty  congratulated  the  skillful 
mechanician,  ordering  from  him  for  his  own  use  a 
similar  vehicle  to  grace  the  royal  stables.  The  Duke 
of  Montemar,  the  Baron  of  Avenac  and  the  Count  of 
Bauzun,  who  had  witnessed  the  trial,  were  unable 
to  credit  their  own  vision,  so  marvelous  did  the  in- 
vention appear  to  them.  Nevertheless,  several  mem- 
bers of  the  French  Academy  united  in  declaring  that 
such  a  piece  of  mechanism  could  never  circulate 
freely  through  the  streets  of  any  city." 
117 


AUTOMOBILE  BIOGRAPHIES 

Either  from  royal  forgetfulness  or  thanks  to  the 
customary  court  intrigues  to  turn  His  Majesty  from 
his  purpose,  or  possibly  because  of  the  somewhat 
crude  nature  of  the  invention  itself,  the  fact  is  that 
from  that  time  forth  not  the  slightest  mention  is  to 
be  found  in  history  of  the  motor  carriage  of  Vau- 
causon. 

ROBINSON 

It  is  on  the  authority  of  James  Watt  that  Dr. 
Robinson  is  credited  with  having  conceived  the  idea 
of  driving  carriages  by  steam  powrer.  Watt  wrote 
as  follows : 

"My  attention  was  first  directed  to  the  subject  of 
steam  engines  by  the  late  Dr.  Robinson,  then  a 
student  in  the  University  of  Glasgow,  afterwards 
Professor  of  Natural  Philosophy  in  the  University 
of  Edinburgh.  He,  in  1759,  threw  out  the  idea  of 
applying  the  power  of  the  steam  engine  to  the  mov- 
ing of  wheel  carriages,  and  to  other  purposes,  but 
the  scheme  was  soon  abandoned  on  his  going 
abroad." 

ERASMUS  DARWIN 

Born  at  Elton,  Nottinghamshire,  England,  De- 
cember 12,  1731.  Died  at  Derby,  April  18,  1802. 

Having  studied  at  St.  John's  College,  Cambridge, 
and  at  Edinburgh,  Darwin  settled  as  a  physician  at 
Litchfield  and  gained  a  large  practice.  In  1781  he 
moved  to  Derby.  He  was  a  man  of  remarkable 
•scientific  attainments  and  a  voluminous  writer  of 
poetry  that  was  pervaded  by  enthusiasm  and  love  of 
nature,  but  had  little  poetic  quality. 
118 


NOTED   INVESTIGATORS 

Darwin  wrote  most  of  his  poetry  and  evolved 
most  of  his  ideas  as  he  drove  about  the  country  in 
a  doctor's  covered  sulky  that  was  piled  high  with 
books  and  writing  materials.  He  was  in  correspon- 
dence with  Benjamin  Franklin  and  Matthew  Boulton 
about  1765  in  regard  to  steam,  and  writing  to  Boul- 
ton, said :  "As  I  was  riding  home  yesterday  I  con- 
sidered the  scheme  of  the  fiery  chariot,  and  the 
longer  I  contemplated  this  favorite  idea,  the  more 
practicable  it  appeared  to  me.  I  shall  lay  my 
thoughts  before  you,  crude  and  undigested  as  they 
appeared  to  me,  and  by  these  hints  you  may  be  led 
into  various  trains  of  thinking  upon  this  subject,  and 
by  that  means  (if  any  hints  can  assist  your  genius, 
which,  without  hints,  is  above  all  others  I  am  ac- 
quainted with)  be  more  likely  to  approve  or  dis- 
approve. And  as  I  am  quite  mad  of  the  scheme, 
I  hope  you  will  not  show  this  paper  to  anyone. 
These  things  are  required :  ( i )  a  rotary  motion ; 
(2)  easily  altering  its  direction  to  any  other  direc- 
tion; (3)  to  be  accelerated,  retarded,  destroyed,  re- 
vived, instantly  and  easily;  (4)  the  bulk,  the  weight, 
the  expense  of  the  machine  to  be  as  small  as  possible 
in  proportion  to  its  weight."  Darwin  gave  sketches 
and  suggested  that  the  steam  carriage  should  have 
three  or  four  wheels,  and  be  driven  by  an  engine 
having  two  cylinders  open  at  the  top,  and  the  steam 
condensed  in  the  bottom  of  the  cylinder,  on  New- 
comen's  principle.  The  steam  was  to  be  admitted 
into  the  cylinders  by  cocks  worked  by  the  person  in 
charge  of  the  steering  wheel,  the  injection  cock  be- 
ing actuated  by  the  engine.  The  "fiery  chariot"  never 
went  beyond  this  suggestion,  however. 
119 


AUTOMOBILE  BIOGRAPHIES 

RICHARD  LOVELL  EDGEWORTH 

An  English  gentleman  of  fortune,  and  much  in- 
terested in  mechanics,  Richard  Lovell  Edgeworth 
was  influenced  by  Dr.  Erasmus  Darwin  to  take  up 
the  subject  of  steam  locomotion.  In  1768,  Dr.  Small, 
in  correspondence  with  James  Watt,  spoke  of  Edge- 
worth  and  his  experiments  in  the  problem  of  moving 
land  and  water  carriages  by  steam.  Two  years  later 
Edgeworth  patented  a  portable  railway  system  and 
then  spent  nearly  forty  years  on  that  one  idea. 

When  an  old  man  of  seventy,  Edgeworth  wrote 
to  James  Watt :  "I  have  always  thought  that  steam 
would  become  the  universal  lord,  and  that  in  time 
we  should  scorn  the  post  horses."  Dr.  Smiles  says : 
"Four  years  later  he  died,  and  left  the  problem 
which  he  had  nearly  all  his  life  been  trying  ineffect- 
ually to  solve,  to  be  worked  out  by  younger  men." 

FRANCIS  MOORE 

In  1769,  Francis  Moore,  of  London,  a  linen 
draper,  invented  a  machine  which  he  described  as 
made  of  wood,  iron,  brass,  copper,  or  other  metals, 
and  constructed  upon  peculiar  principles,  and  capable 
of  being  wrought  or  put  in  motion  by  fire,  water,  or 
air,  without  being  drawn  by  horses  or  any  other 
beast  or  cattle;  and  which  machines,  or  engines, 
upon  repeated  trials,  he  has  discovered  would  be 
very  useful  in  agriculture,  carriage  of  persons  and 
goods,  either  in  coaches,  chariots,  chaises,  carts, 
wagons,  or  other  conveyances,  and  likewise  in  navi- 
gation, by  causing  ships,  boats,  barges,  and  other 
vessels  to  move,  sail,  or  proceed,  with  more  swift- 
ness or  despatch. 

120 


NOTED  INVESTIGATORS 

It  was  said  that,  so  confident  was  the  inventor  of 
the  success  of  his  machine,  he  sold  all  his  own  horses, 
and  by  his  advice  many  of  his  friends  did  the  same, 
expecting  that  the  price  of  that  animal  would  be  so 
affected  by  the  invention,  that  it  would  not  be  again 
one-fourth  of  what  it  was  then.  Moore  made  sev- 
eral trials  with  his  steam  carriage,  and  took  out 
three  patents  for  it.  Like  many  others  of  that  time, 
however,  Moore's  carriages  never  got  into  use. 

PLANTA 

A  Swiss  army  officer  who  was  contemporary  with 
Cugnot  in  the  seventeenth  century.  He  was  en- 
gaged upon  the  problem  of  a  steam  road  wagon  at 
about  the  same  time  that  Cugnot  conceived  and  ex- 
ecuted his  vehicle  in  1769.  General  Gribeauval,  to 
whom  Cugnot's  plan  had  been  referred,  engaged 
Planta  to  pass  upon  it  and  to  examine  the  new 
vehicle.  The  Swiss  officer  found  it  in  all  respects 
so  much  better  than  his  own  that  he  so  reported  to 
the  French  Ministry  of  War  and  abandoned  further 
endeavors  on  that  line. 

J.  S.  KESTLER 

In  1680  a  description  was  published  of  a  carriage 
designed  by  J.  S.  Kestler.  This  was  merely  a  toy, 
set  in  motion  by  mercury  in  a  tube  heated  by  a  can- 
dle. 

BLANCHARD 

In  connection  with  his  partner,  Masurier,  Blanch- 
ard  brought  out  in  Paris,  in  1779,  a  vehicle  that  was 
somewhat  patterned  after  the  man-propelled  carriage 
of  Elie  Richard.  It  was  very  successful  and  at- 
tracted a  great  deal  of  attention. 
121 


AUTOMOBILE  BIOGRAPHIES 

THOMAS  CHARLES  AUGUSTE  DALLERY 

Born  at  Amiens,  France,  September  4,  1754. 
Died. at  Jouy,  near  Versailles,  in  June,  1835. 

About  1780,  Dallery  made  a  steam  vehicle  with  a 
multi-tubular  boiler  which  he  claimed  was  an  orig- 
inal invention  of  his  own.  This  vehicle  was  run  in 
Amiens  and  in  1790  was  seen  on  the  streets  of  Paris. 
In  March,  1803,  he  secured  a  patent  on  the  tubular 
boiler  for  use  on  his  steamboat,  or  on  his  steam 
carriage.  This  vehicle  was  a  boat-shaped  wagon, 
driven  by  a  steam  engine. 

JAMES  WATT 

Born  at  Greenock,  Scotland,  January  19,  1736. 
Died  at  Birmingham,  Staffordshire,  England, 
August  25,  1819. 

Watt  came  of  a  respectable  and  industrious  fam- 
ily. His  grandfather  was  a  professor  of  mathe- 
matics, while  his  father  was  an  instrument  maker, 
councillor  and  manufacturer.  After  a  limited  edu- 
cation young  Watt  went  to  London,  in  1755,  and 
became  a  mathematical  and  nautical  instrument 
maker.  In  that  capacity  he  became  connected  with 
Glasgow  University,  and  there  made  his  discov- 
eries that  resulted  in  the  practical  improvements  in 
the  steam  engine  which  made  him  famous.  He  was 
associated  with  Matthew  Boulton,  under  the  firm 
name  of  Boulton  &  Watt,  from  1774  to  1800,  and 
the  Watt  engines  that  were  built  by  that  concern  at 
Soho  revolutionized  England's  mining  industries. 
His  steam  engines  represented  a  great  step  beyond 
the  Newcomen  engines,  though  still  using  low- 
pressure  steam. 

122 


NOTED  INVESTIGATORS 

Watt's  connection  with  steam  carriages  for  use  on 
the  common  roads,  a  subject  that  was  of  much  mo- 
ment in  his  day,  was  limited  to  a  single  patent  and 
generally  to  discouraging  the  plans  of  others  in  that 
direction,  owing  to  his  fear  that  the  introduction 
of  high-pressure  steam  use  would  harm  the  engine 
business.  In  the  patent  granted  to  him  in  1784  he 
proposed  that  the  boiler  of  his  carriage  should  be 
made  of  wooden  staves,  fastened  with  iron  hoops, 
like  a  cask,  and  the  furnace  to  be  of  iron,  and  placed 
in  the  inside  of  the  boiler,  surrounded  with  water. 

Watt,  however,  never  built  the  steam  carriage. 
He  retained  the  deepest  prejudices  against  the  use 
of  high-pressure  steam,  saying:  "I  soon  re- 
linquished the  idea  of  constructing  an  engine  on  this 
principle;  from  being  sensible  it  would  be  liable  to 
some  of  the  objections  against  Savery's  engine,  viz., 
the  danger  of  bursting  the  boiler,  and  also  that  a 
great  part  of  the  power  of  the  steam  would  be  lost, 
because  no  vacuum  was  formed  to  assist  the  descent 
of  the  piston." 

ROBERT  FOURNESS 

Born  in  Otley,  Yorkshire,  England.  Died  at  an 
early  age. 

Fourness  became  a  practical  engineer  and  invented 
several  labor-saving  machines.  One  of  his  first  in- 
ventions was  for  a  machine  to  split  hides,  that  was 
set  up  and  operated  in  the  establishment  of  his 
father.  Later  in  life  he  established  works  for  him- 
self in  Sheffield,  and  afterwards  in  Gainsborough. 
In  1788,  he  was  a  resident  of  Elland,  Halifax,  and 
there  made  a  steam  carriage  that  was  run  by  a  three- 
123 


AUTOMOBILE  BIOGRAPHIES 

cylinder  inverted  engine.  Spur-gearing  transmitted 
the  driving  power  from  the  crank  shaft  to  the  axle. 
His  patent  was  taken  out  in  conjunction  with  James 
Ashworth.  This  vehicle  was  mounted  on  two  driv- 
ing wheels  and  had  a  smaller  steering  wheel  in  front. 

GEORGE  MEDHURST 

Born  at  Shoreham,  Kent,  England,  in  February, 
1759.  Died  in  September,  1827. 

Medhurst  was  educated  as  a  clock  maker,  but  in 
1789  started  as  an  engineer.  In  the  same  year  he 
secured  a  patent  for  a  windmill  and  pumps  for  com- 
pressing air  to  obtain  motive  power.  One  of  the 
first  investigators  in  this  direction,  the  idea  on  which 
he  worked  and  which  continued  to  absorb  his  energy 
throughout  life,  was  to  make  use  of  the  wind  when 
it  served  in  order  to  compress  large  bodies  of  air  for 
use  when  needed.  In  1800,  he  took  out  a  patent  on 
an  aeolian  engine  and  demonstrated  how  carriages 
could  be  driven  upon  the  common  roads  by  com- 
pressed air  stored  in  reservoirs  underneath  the  body 
of  the  vehicle.  He  also  contemplated  applying  this 
engine  to  other  useful  purposes  and  calculated  that 
small  carriages  could  be  worked  by  a  rotary  engine 
and  larger  ones  by  reciprocating  engines  with  special 
gear  for  varying  power. 

In  describing  his  inventions  and  explaining  his 
ideas  regarding  compressed  air,  Medhurst  said : 
"The  power  applied  to  the  machinery  is  compressed 
air,  and  the  power  to  compress  the  air  I  obtain  gen- 
erally by  wind,  assisted  and  improved  by  machinery 
described  in  this  specification,  and  in  order  to  render 
my  invention  universally  useful  I  propose  to  adapt 
124 


NOTED  INVESTIGATORS 

my  machinery  and  magazine  so  that  it  may  be 
charged  by  hand,  by  a  fall  of  water,  by  a  vacuum 
obtained  by  wind  and  also  by  explosive  and  efferves- 
cent substances,  for  the  rapid  conveyance  of  pas- 
sengers, mails,  dispatches,  artillery,  military  stores, 
etc.,  and  to  establish  regular  stage  coaches  and 
wagons  throughout  the  kingdom,  to  convey  goods 
and  passengers,  for  public  accommodation,  by  erect- 
ing windmills,  water-mills,  etc.,  at  proper  intervals 
upon  the  roads,  to*  be  employed  in  charging  large 
magazines  at  these  stations  with  compressed  air,  or 
in  raising  large  magazines  of  water  by  wind,  etc., 
by  the  power  of  which  portable  magazines  may  be 
charged  when  required  by  machinery  for  that  pur- 
pose." 

Medhurst  contemplated  establishing  regular  lines 
of  coaches,  with  pumping  stations  at  regular  stop- 
ping places.  He  endeavored  to  form  a  company  to 
work  his  inventions  and  develop  his  plans  and  pub- 
lished a  pamphlet  on  the  subject  of  compressed  air. 
About  1800,  he  established  himself  as  a  machinist 
and  ironmaster  in  Denmark  street,  Soho,  and  about 
ten  years  later  was  the  first  to  suggest  pneumatic 
tubes  for  the  carriage  of  parcels  or  passengers. 
Some  two  years  later  he  brought  out  the  proposition 
for  what  has  come  to  be  known  as  the  atmospheric 
railway,  an  appliance  for  conveying  goods  and  pas- 
sengers by  the  power  of  a  piston  in  a  continuous 
tube  laid  between  the  rails. 

ANDREW  VIVIAN 

A  resident  of  Cornwall,  England,  Andrew  Vivian, 
a  cousin  of  Richard  Trevithick,  became  much  inter- 
'25 


AUTOMOBILE  BIOGRAPHIES 

ested  in  the  engineering  experiments  of  his  famous 
relative.  He  worked  with  his  cousin  and  particu- 
larly assisted  him  in  experiments  on  steam  engines 
for  propelling  road  carriages.  In  1802,  he  was  a 
joint  patentee  with  Trevithick,  in  the  early  steam 
vehicle  that  was  taken  to  London  and  was  exhibited 
in  that  city,  where  for  a  short  time  it  occasioned  a 
great  deal  of  public  curiosity. 

Du  QUET 

A  Frenchman  who,  in  1714,  designed  a  small 
windmill  to  give  motion  to  the  wheels  of  his  car- 
riages. 

J.  H.  GENEVOIS 

A  Swiss  clergyman  of  the  early  part  of  the 
eighteenth  century.  He  proposed  to  use  windmills 
or  sails  on  his  wagon  and  by  a  system  of  springs  to 
store  the  energy  thus  obtained  until  such  time  as  it 
should  be  needed  for  driving  purposes. 

JOHN  DUMBELL 

In  1808,  John  Dumbell  secured  a  patent  for  an 
engine  that  had  many  peculiar  features.  He 
planned  to  have  the  steam  act  on  a  series  of  vanes, 
or  fliers,  within  a  cylinder,  "like  the  sails  of  a  wind- 
mill," causing  them  to  rotate  together  with  the  shaft 
to  which  they  were  fixed.  Gearing  transmitted  the 
motion  of  this  shaft  to  the  driving  wheels.  The  in- 
ventor proposed  to  raise  steam  by  permitting  water 
to  drop  upon  a  metal  plate,  kept  at  an  intense  heat 
by  means  of  a  strong  fire,  which  was  stimulated  by  a 
pair  of  bellows. 

126 


NOTED  INVESTIGATORS 

WILLIAM  BRUNTON 

Born  at  Dalkeith,  Scotland,  May  26,  1777.  Died 
at  Camborne,  Cornwall,  England,  October  5,  1857. 

The  eldest  son  of  Robert  Brunton,  a  watch  and 
clock  maker,  William  Brunton  studied  mechanics 
first  in  his  father's  shop  and  then  in  England,  under 
the  guidance  of  his  grandfather,  who  was  a  colliery 
viewer.  When  he  was  thirteen  years  of  age,  in  1790, 
he  began  work  in  the  fitting  shops  of  the  New 
Lanark  cotton  mills  of  David  Dale  and  Richard 
Arkwright.  Remaining  in  that  establishment  for 
six  years  he  then  went  to  the  Boulton  &  Watt  shops, 
at  Soho,  where  he  was  gradually  promoted,  until  he 
finally  became  the  foreman  and  superintendent  of 
engine  manufacturing. 

In  1813,  he  went  to  the  Jessop's  Butterley  Works, 
but  remained  there  only  three  years,  when  he  be- 
came a  partner  and  mechanical  manager  of  the 
Eagle  Foundry,  at  Birmingham,  a  connection  that 
he  maintained  for  ten  years.  From  1825  to  1835,  he 
was  engaged  in  the  practice  of  civil  engineering  in 
London.  In  the  last-mentioned  year,  he  became  a 
share  owner  in  the  Cwm  Avom  tin  works  in 
Glamorganshire,  Wales,  where  he  superintended  the 
erection  of  copper-smelting  furnaces  and  rolling 
mills.  He  was  also  connected  with  the  Maesteg 
Works  in  the  same  county  and  a  brewery  at  Neath. 
Through  the  failure  of  these  enterprises  he  lost  the 
savings  of  his  lifetime  and  was  never  again  engaged 
actively  in  business.  He  invented  many  ingenious 
modes  of  reducing  and  manufacturing  metals ;  made 
some  of  the  original  engines  used  on  the  Humber 
and  the  Trent  and  also  some  of  the  earliest  that  were 
127 


AUTOMOBILE  BIOGRAPHIES 

seen  on  the  Mersey,  including  those  four  vessels  first 
operated  on  the  Liverpool  ferries  in  1814.  He  also 
invented  the  calciner  that  was  put  in  use  in  the  tin 
mines  at  Cornwall  and  the  silver  ore  works  in 
Mexico. 

Like  nearly  all  the  other  engineers  of  his  day, 
Brunton  planned  a  steam  carriage.  This  was  built 
when  he  was  at  the  Butterley  Works,  in  1813,  and 
was  called  "the  mechanical  traveller."  Although  a 
peculiar  machine  it  worked  with  some  degree  of  suc- 
cess, at  a  gradient  of  one  in  thirty-six,  all  the  winter 
of  1814,  at  the  Newbottle  Colliery.  The  machine 
was  a  steam  horse  rather  than  a  steam  carriage.  It 
consisted  of  a  curious  combination  of  levers,  the  ac- 
tion of  which  nearly  resembled  that  of  the  legs  of  a 
man  in  walking,  with  feet  alternately  made  to  press 
against  the  ground  of  the  road  or  railway,  and  in 
such  a  manner  as  to  adapt  themselves  to  the  various 
inclinations  or  inequalities  of  the  surface.  The  feet 
were  of  various  forms,  the  great  object  being  to  pre- 
vent them  from  injuring  the  road,  and  to*  obtain  a 
firm  footing,  so  that  no  jerks  should  take  place  at  the 
return  of  the  stroke,  when  the  action  of  the  engine 
came  upon  them;  for  this  purpose  they  were  made 
broad,  with  short  spikes  to  lay  hold  of  the  ground. 
The  boiler  was  a  cylinder  of  wrought  iron,  five  feet 
six  inches  long,  three  feet  in  diameter,  and  of  such 
strength  as  to  be  capable  of  sustaining  a  pressure  of 
upwards  of  four  hundred  pounds  per  square  inch. 
The  working  cylinder  was  six  inches  in  diameter, 
and  the  piston  had  a  stroke  of  twenty-four  inches; 
the  step  of  the  feet  was  twenty-six  inches,  and  the 
whole  machine,  including  water,  weighed  about 
128 


NOTED  INVESTIGATORS 

forty-five  hundredweight.     In  1815,  the  engine  of 
this  carriage  exploded  and  killed  thirteen  persons. 

THOMAS  TINDALL 

A  steam  engine  was  patented,  in  1814,  by  Thomas 
Tindall,  of  Scarborough.  The  inventor  proposed  to 
use  this  for  an  infinitude  of  purposes,  such  as  driving 
carriages  for  the  conveyance  of  passengers,  plough- 
ing land,  mowing  grass  and  corn,  or  working  thrash- 
ing machines.  The  carriage  had  three  wheels — one 
for  steering.  The  steam  engine  drove,  by  spur  gear- 
ing, four  legs,  which,  pushing  against  the  ground, 
moved  the  carriage.  The  engine  could  also  be  made 
to  act  upon  the  two  hind  wheels  for  ascending  hills, 
or  for  drawing  heavy  loads.  A  windmill,  driven 
partly  by  the  action  of  the  wind,  and  partly  by  the 
exhaust  steam  from  the  engine,  was  used  as  adjunct 
power, 

JOHN  BAYNES 

A  very  ingenious  modification  of  William  Brun- 
ton's  mechanical  traveler,  was  the  subject  of  a  patent 
granted  to  John  Baynes,  a  cutler,  of  Sheffield,  Eng- 
land, in  September,  1819.  The  mechanism  was  de- 
signed to  be  attached  to  carriages  for  the  purpose  of 
giving  them  motion  by  means  of  manual  labor,  or  by 
other  suitable  power,  and  consisted  of  a  peculiar 
combination  of  levers  and  rods.  The  patentee  also 
stated  that  there  might  be  several  sets  of  the  ma- 
chinery above  described  for  working  each  set  with  a 
treadle,  or  even  only  one  set  and  treadle.  Then  he 
added :  "I  prefer  two  for  ordinary  purposes,  partic- 
ularly when  only  a  single  person  is  intended  to>  be 
129 


AUTOMOBILE  BIOGRAPHIES 

conveyed  in  the  carriage,  who  may  work  the  same 
by  placing  one  foot  on  each  treadle,  in  which  the 
action  will  be  alternate.  The  lower  parts  of  the  leg 
should  be  so  formed  or  shod  as  not  to  slip  upon  the 
ground.  This  machinery  may  be  variously  applied 
to  carriages,  according  to  circumstances,  so  as  that 
the  treadles  may  be  worked  either  behind  or  before 
the  carriage,  still  producing  a  forward  motion;  in 
some  cases  it  may  be  advantageous  to  joint  the  front 
end  of  the  treadles  to  the  carriage  and  press  the  feet 
on  the  hind  ends." 

JULIUS  GRIFFITHS 

Among  those  who  came  to  the  front  with  plans 
for  steam  carriages  for  the  public  highways,  soon 
after  the  roads  began  to  be  improved,  was  Julius 
Griffiths,  of  Brompton  Crescent.  In  1821,  he 
patented  a  steam  carriage  that  was  built  by  Joseph 
Bramhah,  a  celebrated  engineer  and  manufacturer. 
It  is  said  that  part  of  the  mechanism  was  designed 
by  Arzberger,  a  foreigner. 

The  carriage  has  been  termed  by  some  English 
authorities  "the  first  steam  coach  constructed  in  this 
country,  expressly  for  the  conveyance  of  passengers 
on  common  roads."  It  was  repeatedly  tested  dur- 
ing a  period  of  three  or  four  years,  but  failed  on  ac- 
count of  boiler  deficiencies.  Alexander  Gordon  said 
of  it :  "The  engines,  pumps,  and  connections  were 
all  in  the  best  style  of  mechanical  execution,  and  had 
Mr.  Griffiths'  boiler  been  of  such  a  kind  as  to  gen- 
erate regularly  the  required  quantity  of  steam,  a  per- 
fect steam  carriage  must  have  been  the  consequence." 
The  carriage  moved  easily  and  answered  very  readily 
130 


NOTED  INVESTIGATORS 

*, 

to  guidance.     The  vehicle  was  a  double  coach  and 
could  carry  eight  passengers. 

This  locomotive  had  two  vertical  working  steam 
cylinders,  which  with  the  boiler,  condenser,  and  other 
details  were  suspended  to  a  wood  frame  at  the  rear 
of  the  carriage.  The  engineer  was  seated  behind 
and  did  his  own  firing.  The  boiler  was  a  series  of 
horizontal  water  tubes,  one  and  one-half  inches  in 
diameter  and  two  feet  long;  at  each  end  the  flanges 
were  bolted  to  the  vertical  tubes  forming  the  sides 
of  the  furnace.  Attached  to  the  wood  frame  in  front 
of  the  driving  wheels,  was  a  small  water  tank,  and  a 
force  pump  supplied  the  boiler  with  water.  The 
steam,  passing  through  the  cylinder,  went  into>  an 
air  condenser.  The  power  of  the  engines  was  com- 
municated from  the  piston  rods  to  the  driving 
wheels  of  the  carriage  by  sweep  rods,  the  lower  ends 
of  which  were  provided  with  driving  pinions  and 
detents,  which  operated  upon  toothed  gear  fixed  to 
the  hind  carriage  axle.  The  object  of  this  mechan- 
ism was  to  keep  the  driving  pinions  always  in  gear 
with  the  toothed  wheels,  however  the  engine  and 
other  machinery  might  vibrate  or  the  wheels  be  jolted 
upon  uneven  ground.  The  boiler,  engine,  and  other 
working  parts  were  suspended  to-  the  wood  frame  by 
chain  slings,  having  strong  spiral  springs  so  as  to 
reduce  the  vibration  from  rough  roads. 

EDMUND  CARTWRIGHT 

Born  at  Marnham,  Nottinghamshire,  England, 
April  24,  1743.  Died  at  Hastings,  October  30,  1823. 

Cartwright  was  educated  at  Oxford  and  secured  a 
living  in  the  English  church.  He  devoted  himself  to 


AUTOMOBILE  BIOGRAPHIES 

the  ministry  and  to  literature  until  1784,  when  he 
became  interested  in  machinery  and  in  the  following 
year  invented  the  power  loom.  He  took  out  other 
patents  and  also  gave  some  attention  to  devising  a 
mechanical  carriage  propelled  by  man  power.  In 
1822,  he  made  a  vehicle  that  was  moved  by  a  pair 
of  treadles  and  cranks  worked  by  the  driver. 

Even  the  steam  engine  engaged  his  attention. 
Some  improvements  which  he  proposed  in  it  are  re- 
corded in  works  on  mechanics.  While  residing  at 
Eltham,  in  Lincolnshire,  he  used  frequently  to  tell 
his  son  that,  if  he  lived  to  be  a  man,  he  would  see 
both  ships  and  land-carriages  impelled  by  steam.  At 
that  early  period  he  constructed  a  model  of  a  steam 
engine  attached  to  a  barge,  which  he  explained, 
about  the  year  1793,  to  Robert  Fulton.  It  appears 
that  even  in  his  old  age,  only  a  year  before  his  death, 
he  was  actively  engaged  in  endeavoring  to  contrive  a 
plan  of  propelling  land-carriages  by  steam. 

T.  BURTSALL 

An  engineer,  of  Edinburgh,  Scotland,  T.  Burtsall, 
in  conjunction  with  J.  Hill,  of  London,  got  out,  in 
1824,  a  patent  for  flash  or  instantaneous  generation 
boilers.  His  aim  was  to  make  the  metal  of  the  boiler 
store  heat  instead  of  a  mass  of  water,  and  he  ac- 
complished this  by  heating  the  boiler  to  anywhere 
from  two  hundred  and  fifty  degrees  to  six  hundred 
degrees  Fahrenheit,  keeping  the  water  in  a  separate 
vessel  and  pumping  it  into  the  boiler  as  steam  was  re- 
quired. A  coach  that  he  built  to  run  with  this  boiler 
weighed  eight  tons,  and  it  was  a  failure,  simply  be- 
cause the  boiler  could  not  make  steam  fast  enough. 
132 


NOTED  INVESTIGATORS 

T.  W.  PARKER 

A  working  model  of  a  light  steam  carriage  was 
made  by  T.  W.  Parker,  of  Illinois,  in  1825.  Three 
wheels  supported  the  carriage,  the  two  hind  wheels 
being  eight  feet  in  diameter.  The  double-cylinder 
engine  was  used. 

GEORGE  POCOCK 

One  of  the  most  curious  of  the  wind  vehicle  pro- 
ductions that  held  the  fancy  of  scientists  to  a  slight 
extent  in  the  early  part  of  the  nineteenth  century  was 
the  charvolant  or  kite  carriage  that  was  devised  by 
George  Pocock  in  1826,  and  built  by  Pocock  and  his 
partner,  Colonel  Viney.  This  was  a  very  light  one- 
seated  carriage,  drawn  by  a  string  of  kites  harnessed 
tandem.  With  a  good  wind  these  kites  developed 
great  power  and  it  is  said  that  the  carriage  whirled 
along,  even  on  heavy  roads,  at  the  rate  of  a  mile  in 
three  or  even  two  and  one-half  minutes.  Once 
Viney  and  Pocock  made  the  trip  from  Bristol  to 
London,  and  they  often  ran  their  carriage  around 
Hyde  Park  and  the  suburbs  of  London.  As  the  wind 
could  not  always  be  depended  upon  the  charvolant 
was  provided  with  a  rear  platform,  upon  which  a 
pony  was  carried  for  emergencies. 

SAMUEL  BROWN 

In  1826,  Samuel  Brown  applied  his  gas- vacuum 
engine  to  the  propulsion  of  a  carriage,  which  was 
effectively  worked  along  the  public  roads  in  Eng- 
land. It  even  ascended  the  very  steep  acclivity  of 
Shooter's  Hill,  in  Kent,  to  the  astonishment  of  num- 
erous spectators.  The  expense  of  working  this  ma- 
133 


AUTOMOBILE   BIOGRAPHIES 

chine  was,  however,  said  far  to  exceed  that  of  steam, 
and  this  formed  a  barrier  to  its  introduction.  Ex- 
periments with  this  engine  for  the  propulsion  of  ves- 
sels on  canals  or  rivers  were  also  made  by  the  Canal 
Gas  Engine  Company.  Brown  patented  a  locomo- 
tive for  common  roads  in  1823. 

JAMES  NEVILLE 

In  January,  1827,  James  Neville,  an  engineer  of 
London,  took  out  a  patent  for  a  "new-invented  im- 
proved carriage,"  to  be  worked  by  steam,  the  chief 
object  of  which  appears  to  have  been  to  provide 
wheels  adapted  to  take  a  firm  hold  of  the  ground. 
He  proposed  to  make  each  of  the  spokes  of  the 
wheels  by  means  of  two  rods  of  iron,  coming  nearly 
together  at  the  nave,  but  diverging  considerably 
apart  to  their  other  ends,  where  they  were  fastened 
to  an  iron  felly-ring  of  the  breadth  of  the  tire,  and 
this  tire  was  to  be  so  provided  with  numerous  point- 
ed studs  about  half  an  inch  long  as  to  stick  into  the 
ground  to  prevent  the  wheel  from  slipping  round. 
A  second  method  of  preventing  this  effect  was  to 
fasten  upon  the  tire  a  series  of  flat  springing  plates, 
each  of  them  forming  a  tangent  to  the  circumference, 
so  that  as  the  wheels  rolled  forward  each  plate  should 
be  bent  against  the  tire  and  recover  its  tangential 
position  as  it  left  the  ground  in  its  revolution.  It 
was  considered  that  the  increased  bearing  surface  of 
the  plate,  and  the  resistance  of  its  farthest  edge, 
would  infallibly  prevent  slipping.  For  propelling 
the  carriage  Neville  proposed  to  use  a  horizontal 
vibrating  cylinder  to  give  motion  direct  to  the  crank 
axis  by  means  of  the  compound  motion  of  the  piston 
134 


NOTED   INVESTIGATORS 

rod,  as  invented  by  Trevi thick,  the  motion  to  the 
running  wheels  to  be  communicated  through  gear  of 
different  velocities. 

T.  S.  HOLLAND 

Among  the  singular  propositions  for  producing  a 
locomotive  action  that  were  brought  out  early  in  the 
eighteenth  century  was  that  invented  by  T.  S.  Hol- 
land, of  London,  for  which  he  took  out  a  patent  in 
December,  1827.  The  invention  consisted  in  the  ap- 
plication of  an  arrangement  of  levers,  similar  to  that 
commonly  known  by  the  name  of  lazy-tongs,  for  the 
purpose  of  propelling  carriages.  The  objects  ap- 
peared to  be  to  derive  from  the  reciprocating  motion 
of  a  short  lever  a  considerable  degree  of  speed,  and 
to  obtain  an  abutment  against  which  the  propellers 
should  act  horizontally,  in  the  direction  of  the  mo- 
tion of  the  carriage,  instead  of  obliquely  to  that  mo- 
tion, as  is  the  case  when  carriages  are  impelled  by 
levers  striking  the  earth. 

JAMES  N  AS  MYTH 

Born  in  Edinburgh,  Scotland,  August  19,  1808. 
Died  in  South  Kensington,  England,  May  6,  1890. 

While  yet  in  his  teens  James  Nasmyth  showed 
great  mechanical  ability  and  constructed  a  small 
steam  engine.  In  1821,  he  became  a  student  at  the 
Edinburgh  School  of  Arts.  Six  years  later  he  had 
made  a  very  substantial  advance  in  his  experiments. 
The  story  of  what  he  endeavored  to  accomplish  is 
best  told  by  himself.  In  later  life  he  wrote: 

"About  the  year  1827,  when  I  was  nineteen  years 
old,  the  subject  of  steam  carriages  to  run  upon  com- 


AUTOMOBILE  BIOGRAPHIES 

mon  roads  occupied  considerable  attention.  Several 
engineers  and  mechanical  schemers  had  tried  their 
hands,  but  as  yet  no  substantial  results  had  come  of 
their  attempts  to  solve  the  problem.  Like  others,  I 
tried  my  hand.  Having  made  a  small  working 
model  of  a  steam  carriage,  I  exhibited  it  before  the 
members  of  the  Scottish  Society  of  Arts.  The  per- 
formance of  this  active  little  machine  was  so  gratify- 
ing to  the  Society,  that  they  requested  me  to  con- 
struct one  of  such  power  as  to  enable  four  or  six  per- 
sons to  be  conveyed  along  the  ordinary  roads.  The 
members  of  the  Society,  in  their  individual  capacity, 
subscribed  three  hundred  dollars,  which  they  placed 
in  my  hands  as  the  means  for  carrying  out  their 
project.  I  accordingly  set  to  work  at  once,  and  com- 
pleted the  carriage  in  about  four  months,  when  it 
was  exhibited  before  the  members  of  the  Society  of 
Arts.  Many  successful  trials  were  made  with  it  on 
the  Queensferry  Road,  near  Edinburgh.  The  runs 
were  generally  of  four  or  five  miles,  with  a  load  of 
eight  passengers  sitting  on  benches  about  three  feet 
from  the  ground.  The  experiments  were  continued 
for  nearly  three  months,  to  the  great  satisfaction  of 
the  members. 

"I  may  mention  that  in  my  steam  carriage  I  em- 
ployed the  waste  steam  to  create  a  blast  or  draught, 
by  discharging  it  into  the  short  chimney  of  the  boiler 
at  its  lowest  part;  and  I  found  it  most  effective.  I 
was  not  at  that  time  aware  that  George  Stephenson 
and  others  had  adopted  the  same  method ;  but  it  was 
afterwards  gratifying  to  me  to  find  that  I  had  been 
correct  as  regards  the  important  uses  of  the  steam 
blast  in  the  chimney.  In  fact,  it  is  to  this  use  of  the 

136 


NOTED  INVESTIGATORS 

waste  steam  that  we  owe  the  practical  success  of  the 
locomotive  engine  as  a  tractive  power  on  railways, 
especially  at  high  speeds. 

"The  Society  of  Arts  did  not  attach  any  commer- 
cial value  to  my  road  carriage.  It  was  merely  as  a 
matter  of  experiment  that  they  had  invited  me  to 
construct  it.  When  it  proved  successful  they  made 
me  a  present  of  the  entire  apparatus.  As  I  was 
anxious  to  get  on  with  my  studies,  and  to  prepare 
for  the  work  of  practical  engineering,  I  proceeded 
no  further.  I  broke  up  the  steam  carriage,  and  sold 
the  two  small  high-pressure  engines,  provided  with 
a  strong  boiler,  for  three  hundred  and  thirty-five  dol- 
lars, a  sum  which  more  than  defrayed  all  the  ex- 
penses of  the  construction  and  working  of  the  ma- 
chine." 

F.  ANDREWS 

It  is  said  that  F.  Andrews,  of  Stamford  Rivers, 
Essex,  England,  was  the  inventor  of  the  pilot  steer- 
ing wheel  which  was  used  by  Gurney  and  has  been 
often  used  since  then.  He  also  made  other  improve- 
ments in  steam  carriages  in  1826.  One  of  his  patents 
was  for  the  oscillating  cylinders  that  were  used  by 
James  Neville  in  his  steam  carriage.  Andrews' 
steam  carriage  was  a  failure,  like  many  others  of  that 
period,  on  account  of  imperfect  working  of  the 
boiler. 

HARLAND 

Dr.  Harland,  of  Scarborough,  in  1827  invented 
and  patented  a  steam  carriage  for  running  on  com- 
mon roads.  A  working  model  of  the  steam  coach 

137 


AUTOMOBILE  BIOGRAPHIES 

was  perfected,  embracing  a  multi-tubular  boiler  for 
quickly  raising  high-pressure  steam,  with  a  revolving 
surface  condenser  for  reducing  the  steam  to  water 
again  by  means  of  its  exposure  to  the  cold  draught 
of  the  atmosphere  through  the  interstices  of  ex- 
tremely thin  laminations  of  copper  plates.  The  en- 
tire machinery  placed  under  the  bottom  of  the  car- 
riage, was  borne  on  springs;  the  whole  being  of  an 
elegant  form. 

This  model  steam  carriage  ascended  with  ease  the 
steepest  roads.  Its  success  was  so  complete  that 
Harland  designed  a  full-sized  carriage;  but  the  de- 
mands upon  his  professional  skill  were  so  great  that 
he  was  prevented  going  further  than  constructing  a 
pair  of  engines,  the  wheels,  and  a  part  of  the  boiler. 
Harland  spent  his  leisure  time  in  inventions  and  in 
that  work  was  associated  with  Sir  George  Cayley. 
He  was  Mayor  of  Scarborough  three  times.  He  died 
in  1866. 

PECQUEUR 

Chief  of  shops  at  the  Conservatoire  des  Arts  et 
Metier,  Paris,  Pecqueur  made  a  steam  wagon  in 
1828.  His  vehicle  had  two  drive  wheels  keyed  to 
two  pairs  of  axles.  His  planet  gearing  was  the  origin 
of  the  balance  gear. 

JAMES  VINEY 

Colonel  James  Viney,  Royal  Engineers,  in  1829 
patented  a  boiler  intended  for  steam  carriages.  His 
plan  was  to  have  two,  three,  four,  or  six  concentric 
hollow  cylinders  containing  water,  between  which 
the  fire  from  below  passed  up.  An  annular  space  for 

138 


NOTED   INVESTIGATORS 

water,  and  an  annular  space  or  flue  for  the  ascending 
fire,  were  placed  alternately,  the  water  being  between 
two  fires. 

CHEVALIER  BORDINO 

An  Italian  officer  of  engineers,  Bordino  devised 
and  constructed  a  steam  carriage  for  the  diversion  of 
his  little  daughter.  It  was  a  carriage  a  la  Dumont, 
and  for  forty  years  was  used  regularly  in  the  carnival 
festivities  of  Turin  in  the  early  part  of  the  nineteenth 
century.  It  is  still  preserved  as  donated  by  the 
widow  of  Bordino  to  the  Industrial  Museum  of 
Turin. 

CLIVE 

Best  known  as  a  writer  of  articles  on  the  steam 
carriage,  over  the  signature  of  Saxula,  in  the 
Mechanic's  Magazine,  Clive,  of  Cecil  House,  Staf- 
fordshire, England,  also<  engaged  in  experimenting 
with  steam.  In  1830,  he  secured  patents  for  two  im- 
provements in  locomotives,  one  increasing  the  diam- 
eter of  the  wheels  and  the  other  increasing  the  throw 
of  the  cranks.  After  a  time  he  seems  to  have  lost 
faith  in  the  steam  carriage,  for  in  1843  ne  wrote: 
"I  am  an  old  common  road  steam  carriage  projector, 
but  gave  it  up  as  impracticable  ten  years  ago,  and  I 
am  a  warm  admirer  of  Colonel  Maceroni's  inven- 
tions. My  opinion  for  years  has  been,  and  often  so 
expressed,  that  it  is  impossible  to  build  an  engine 
sufficiently  strong  to  run  even  without  a  load  on  a 
common  road,  year  by  year,  at  the  rate  of  fifteen  to 
twenty  miles  an  hour.  It  would  break  down.  Cold 
iron  at  that  speed  cannot  stand  the  shock  of  the  mo- 
139 


AUTOMOBILE  BIOGRAPHIES 

mentum  of  a  constant  fall  from  stones  and  ruts  of 
even  an  inch  high." 

SUMMERS  AND  OGLE 

Two  steam  carriages  built  by  Summers  and  Ogle, 
in  1831,  were  among  the  most  successful  vehicles  of 
their  kind  in  that  day.  One  of  these  carriages  had 
two  steam  cylinders,  each  seven  and  one-half  inches 
in  diameter  and  with  eighteen-inch  stroke.  It  was 
mounted  on  three  wheels  and  its  boiler  would  work 
at  a  pressure  of  two  hundred  and  fifty  pounds  per 
square  inch.  Passengers  were  carried  in  the  front 
and  the  middle  of  the  coach,  while  the  tank  and  the 
boiler  were  behind.  The  second  carriage  had  three 
steam  cylinders,  each  four  inches  in  diameter,  with  a 
twelve-inch  stroke.  When  the  committee  of  the 
House  of  Commons  was  investigating  the  subject  of 
steam  locomotion  on  the  common  roads  Summers  and 
Ogle  appeared  and  gave  interesting  particulars  con- 
cerning their  vehicles.  The  greatest  velocity  ever 
obtained  was  thirty-two  miles  an  hour.  They  went 
from  the  turnpike  gate  at  Southampton  to  the  four- 
mile  stone  on  the  London  road,  a  continued  elevation, 
with  one  slight  descent,  at  the  rate  of  twenty-four 
and  a  half  miles  per  hour,  loaded  with  people;  twenty 
passengers  were  often  carried.  Their  first  steam 
carriage  ran  from  Cable  Street,  Wellclose  Square,  to 
within  two  miles  and  a  half  of  Basingstoke,  when  the 
crank  shaft  broke,  and  they  were  obliged  to  put  the 
whole  machine  into  a  barge  on  the  canal  and  send  it 
back  to  London.  This  same  machine  had  previously 
run  in  various  directions  about  the  streets  and  out- 
skirts of  London.  With  their  improved  carriage 
140 


NOTED   INVESTIGATORS 

they  went  from  Southampton  to  Birmingham,  Liver- 
pool and  London,  with  the  greatest  success. 

The  Saturday  Magazine,  of  October  6,  1832,  gave 
an  account  of  one  of  their  trials  as  follows  :  "I  have 
just  returned  from  witnessing  the  triumph  of  science 
in  mechanics,  by  traveling  along  a  hilly  and  crooked 
road  from  Oxford  to  Birmingham  in  a  steam  car- 
riage. This  truly  wonderful  machine  is  the  inven- 
tion of  Captain  Ogle,  of  the  Royal  Navy,  and  Mr. 
Summers,  his  partner,  and  is  the  first  and  only  one 
that  has  accomplished  so  long  a  journey  over  chance 
roads,  and  without  rails.  Its  rate  of  traveling  may 
be  called  twelve  miles  an  hour,  but  twenty  or  per- 
haps thirty  down  hill  if  not  checked  by  the  brake,  a 
contrivance  which  places  the  whole  of  the  machinery 
under  complete  control.  Away  went  the  splendid 
vehicle  through  that  beauteous  city  (Oxford)  at  the 
rate  of  ten  miles  an  hour,  which,  when  clear  of  the 
houses,  was  accelerated  to  fourteen.  Just  as  the 
steam  carriage  was  entering  the  town  of  Birming- 
ham, the  supply  of  coke  being  exhausted,  the  steam 
dropped ;  and  the  good  people,  on  learning  the  cause, 
flew  to  the  frame,  and  dragged  it  into  the  inn  yard.'7 

GIBBS 

An  English  engineer,  Gibbs  made  a  special  study 
of  the  steam  carriage  of  Sir  Charles  Dance  in  1831. 
As  a  result  of  his  investigations  he  built  a  steam  drag 
in  1832.  This  was  intended  to  draw  passenger  car- 
riages and  it  had  a  boiler  with  spirally  descending 
flue  placed  behind  the  driving  wheels.  In  1832,  in 
conjunction  with  his  partner,  Applegate,  he  patented 
a  steam  carriage  with  a  tubular  boiler  and  oscillating 
141 


AUTOMOBILE  BIOGRAPHIES 

engine  cylinders.  The  power  from  the  axle  was 
transmitted  to  the  driving  wheels  through  friction 
bands,  arranged  in  the  bases  of  the  wheels  so  that  one 
or  both  wheels  could  be  coupled  to  the  axles. 

CHARLES  DANCE 

An  enthusiastic  motorist,  Sir  Charles  Dance,  of 
London,  in  the  first  third  of  the  ninteenth  century 
did  a  great  deal  to  encourage  the  engineers  who  were 
inventing  steam  road  vehicles.  He  was  financially 
interested  in  several  of  the  companies  that  were  or- 
ganized to  run  steam  coaches  over  the  common  roads. 
He  was  the  backer  of  Goldsworthy  Gurney,  and  was 
also  engaged  in  building  for  himself.  His  most 
famous  car  was  a  coach  that  ran  every  day  from  the 
Strand,  London,  to  Brighton.  This  was  an  engine 
mounted  on  four  wheels  with  a  tall  rectangular  fun- 
nel that  narrowed  toward  the  top.  Above  the  engine 
were  seats  for  six  or  seven  persons  besides  the 
driver.  Behind  the  engine  was  a  vehicle  like  a  box- 
car, low  hung  on  wheels.  On  the  side  of  this 
box  was  emblazoned  the  coat  of  arms  of  its  owner. 
On  the  roof  seat  in  front  were  places  for  four  pas- 
sengers. On  a  big  foot-board  behind,  stood  the  foot- 
man. This  carriage  was  one  of  the  spectacular  sights 
of  London  at  that  time  and  great  crowds  gathered  in 
the  Strand  every  day  to  witness  its  departure. 

Dance  ran  Gurney' s  coaches  on  the  Cheltenham 
and  Gloucester  Road  until  public  opposition  compelled 
his  withdrawal,  but  after  that  he  was  a  joint  patentee 
with  Joshua  Field,  of  an  improved  boiler.  This  was 
applied  to  the  road  carriage  above  mentioned  and  the 
first  trips  were  made  in  September,  1833,  with  a 
142 


NOTED  INVESTIGATORS 

drag  and  omnibus  attached,  a  speed  of  sixteen  miles 
an  hour  being  attained.  On  the  first  trip  from  Lon- 
don to  Brighton,  fifteen  passengers  were  carried  and 
the  distance  o<f  fifty-two  miles  was  covered  in  five 
and  a  half  hours,  the  return  journey  being  performed 
in  less  than  five  hours.  About  the  middle  of  October 
the  steam  drag  and  omnibus  were  put  upon  the  road 
between  Wellington  Street,  Waterloo  Bridge,  and 
Greenwich,  where  it  continued  to  run  for  a  fortnight, 
with  a  view  of  showing  the  public  in  London  what 
could  be  clone  in  this  direction.  The  proprietor  had 
no  intention  of  making  it  a  permanent  mode  of  con- 
veyance, and  therefore  kept  the  company  as  select  as 
he  could  by  charging  half  a  crown  for  tickets  each 
way. 

JOSHUA  FIELD 

Born  in  1786.    Died  in  1863. 

A  member  of  the  well-known  firm  of  Maudsley, 
Sons  &  Field,  marine  engineers,  of  London,  Eng- 
land, Joshua  Field  took  out  a  patent  for  an  improved 
boiler,  in  conjunction  with  Sir  Charles  Dance.  The 
firm  made  an  improved  vehicle  for  Dance,  and  in 
1835  Field  constructed  for  himself  a  steam  carriage 
that  made  a  trip  in  July  with  a  party  of  guests.  The 
carriage  was  driven  up  Denmark  Hill,  and  did  the 
distance,  nine  miles,  in  forty-four  minutes.  It  also 
ran  several  times  to  Reading  and  back,  at  the  rate 
of  twelve  miles  an  hour.  One  of  the  subscribers  to- 
wards the  building  of  this  carriage,  said  that  it  was  a 
success  mechanically,  but  not  economical.  Field  was 
one  of  the  six  founders  of  the  Institution  of  Civil 
Engineers. 


AUTOMOBILE  BIOGRAPHIES 
PlETZ 

Previous  to  the  time  that  the  carriage  of  Francis 
Maceroni  was  taken  to  France,  an  engine  designed 
by  Dietz  was  run  in  the  streets  of  Paris.  In  the  re- 
ports of  the  Academy  of  Sciences  and  Academy  of 
Industry  in  Paris,  in  1840,  this  vehicle  was  described. 
The  carriage  had  eight  wheels,  two  of  which  were 
large  and  gave  the  impulsion.  The  six  smaller 
wheels  rose  and  fell  according  to  the  irregularity  of 
the  road,  and  at  the  same  time  assisted  in  bearing  the 
weight  of  the  carriages.  The  wheels  were  bound 
with  wood  tires,  having  cork  underneath.  The  loco- 
motive was  a  drag,  drawing  a  carriage  for  pas- 
sengers. The  engine  was  of  thirty  horse-power,  and 
a  speed  of  ten  miles  an  hour  was  made. 

YATES 

A  steam  carriage  was  built  by  Messrs.  Yates  & 
Smith,  London,  in  1834.  It  had  a  trial  in  July  of 
that  year,  running  from  the  factory  in  Whitechapel, 
along  High  and  several  other  streets,  at  the  rate  of 
ten  to  twelve  miles  an  hour.  Vibrating  engines, 
working  on  horizontal  framing,  were  used.  The 
coach  resembled  an  ordinary  stage-coach. 

G.    MlLLICHAP 

In  a  letter  to  an  English  engineering  paper  in 
1837,  G.  Millichap,  of  Birmingham,  claimed  to  have 
a  locomotive  carriage  building.  He  wrote  :  "If  your 
correspondent  will  take  the  trouble  to  call  at  my 
house  I  shall  be  happy  to  show  him  a  locomotive  car- 
riage in  a  state  of  great  forwardness,  intended  de- 
cidedly for  common  roads." 
144 


NOTED  INVESTIGATORS 

JAMES  CALEB  ANDERSON 

Born  in  Cork,  Ireland,  July  21,  1782.  Died  in 
London,  April  4,  1861. 

The  father  of  Sir  James  Caleb  Anderson,  of  But- 
tevant  Castle,  Ireland,  was  John  Anderson,  a  cele- 
brated merchant  of  Ireland,  famous  as  the  founder 
of  the  town  of  Fermoy.  The  son  gave  much  atten- 
tion to  the  subject  of  steam  and  steam  propulsion, 
and  made  many  experiments,  taking  out  several 
patents.  In  1831,  he  lodged  a  specification  for  im- 
provements in  machinery  for  propelling  vessels  on 
water;  in  1837,  for  improvements  in  locomotive 
engines,  and  in  1846,  for  improvements  in  obtaining 
motive  power  and  applying  it  to  the  propulsion  of 
cars  and  vessels  and  the  driving  of  machinery.  His 
1831  patent  was  for  a  manually-propelled  vehicle,  a 
carriage  in  which  twenty-four  men  were  arranged  on 
seats,  like  rowers  in  a  boat,  but  in  two  tiers,  one 
above  the  other.  The  action  was  nearly  the  same  as 
the  pulling  of  oars,  the  only  difference  being  that  all 
the  men  sitting  on  one  seat  pulled  at  one  horizontal 
cross-bar,  each  extremity  of  which  was  furnished 
with  an  anti-friction  roller  that  ran  between  guide 
rails  on  the  opposite  sides  of  the  carriage.  The  ends 
of  each  of  these  horizontal  bars  were  connected  to 
reciprocating  rods  that  gave  motion  to  a  crank  shaft, 
on  which  were  mounted  spur  gear  that  actuated  sim- 
ilar gear  on  the  axis  of  the  running  wheels  of  the 
carriage;  so  that  by  sliding  the  gear  on  the  axis  of 
the  latter  any  required  velocity  could  be  communi- 
cated to  the  carriage,  or  a  sudden  stop  made.  It  was 
proposed  to  employ  this  as  a  drag,  to  draw  one  or 
more  carriages  containing  passengers  after  it.  The 


AUTOMOBILE  BIOGRAPHIES 

patentee  had  chiefly  in  view  the  movement  of  troops 
by  this  method. 

Anderson  gave  financial  support  to  W.  H.  James, 
in  1827,  until  he  fell  into  pecuniary  difficulties.  Ten 
years  later  he  re-engaged  in  steam  carriage  construc- 
tion on  his  own  account,  and  according  to  his  own 
reports  he  expended  over  one  hundred  and  fifty 
thousand  dollars  on  experiments.  It  was  said  that 
he  failed  in  twenty-nine  carriages  before  he  succeed- 
ed in  the  last.  He  patented  a  boiler  that  was  said  to 
be  a  poor  copy  of  Walter  Hancock's  boiler.  Then  he 
organized  a  joint-stock  company,  the  Steam  Car- 
riage and  Wagon  Company,  which  proposed  to  con- 
struct steam  drags  in  Dublin  and  in  Manchester, 
which,  when  completed,  were  to  convey  goods  and 
passengers  at  double  the  speed  and  at  half  the  cost  of 
horse  carriages. 

Anderson  said :  "I  produce  and  prove  my  steam 
drags  before  I  am  paid  for  them,  and  I  keep  them  in 
repair ;  consequently,  neither  the  public  nor  the  com- 
pany runs  any  risk.  The  first  steam  carriage  built  for 
the  company  is  nearly  completed.  It  will  speak  for 
itself."  In  the  Mechanic's  Magazine,  June,  1839,  a 
Dublin  correspondent  writes :  "I  was  fortunate 
enough  to  get  a  sight  of  Sir  James  Anderson's  steam 
carriage,  with  which  I  was  much  pleased.  It  had 
just  arrived  from  the  country,  and  was  destined  for 
London  in  about  three  weeks.  The  engine  weighs 
ten  tons,  and  will,  I  dare  say,  act  very  well.  I  shall 
have  an  opportunity  of  judging  that,  as  the  tender  is 
.  at  Cork.  It  has  a  sort  of  diligence,  not  joined,  but 
to  be  attached  to  the  tender,  making  in  all  three 
carriages.  I  talked  a  great  deal  about  it  to  one  of  his 
146 


NOTED   INVESTIGATORS 

principal  men,  who  was  most  lavish  in  its  praises, 
especially  as  regards  the  boiler."  In  August,  1839, 
the  carriage  arrived  in  London. 

In  1840,  a  report  said:  "Several  steam  carriages 
are  being  built  at  Manchester  and  Dublin,  under  Sir 
James  Anderson's  patents,  and  one  has  been  com- 
pleted at  each  place.  At  Manchester  the  steam  drag 
had  been  frequently  running  between  Cross  Street 
and  Altrincham,  and  the  last  run  was  made  at  the 
rate  of  twenty  miles  an  hour,  with  four  tons  on  the 
tender,  in  the  presence  of  Mr.  Sharp,  of  the  firm  of 
Sharp,  Roberts  and  Company,  of  Manchester,  and 
others.'1'  A  newspaper  of  the  same  year  reported 
that  an  experimental  trip  of  Anderson's  steam  drag 
for  common  roads  took  place  on  the  Howth  Road, 
Dublin.  It  ran  about  two  hours,  backing,  and  turn- 
ing about  in  every  direction — the  object  being  chiefly 
to  try  the  various  parts  in  detail.  It  repeatedly 
turned  the  corners  of  the  avenues  at  a  speed  of  twelve 
miles  an  hour,  the  steam  pressure  required  being  only 
forty-six  pounds  per  square  inch.  No  smoke  was 
seen,  and  little  steam  was  observed.  The  whole  ma- 
chinery was  ornamentally  boxed  in,  so  that  none  of 
the  moving  parts  was  exposed  to  view,  and  it  was 
found  that  the  horses  did  not  shy  at  this  carriage. 

The  company  had  great  plans  for  travel  communi- 
cation by  means  of  these  drags  between  the  chief 
towns  in  Ireland,  as  soon  as  a  few  of  the  steam  car- 
riages were  finished.  An  even  more  pretentious 
scheme  involved  a  service  in  conjunction  with  the 
railway  trains  from  London,  carriages  to  be  run  from 
Birmingham  to  Hoiyhead,  whence  passengers  were 
to  be  conveyed  to  Dublin  by  steamer ;  from  Dublin  to 

147 


AUTOMOBILE  BIOGRAPHIES 

Galway  the  steam  drags  were  to  be  employed;  and 
thence  to  New  York  per  vessel  touching  at  Halifax ; 
thus  making  Ireland  the  stepping-stone  between  Eng- 
land, Nova  Scotia,  and  the  United  States  of  Amer- 
ica. But  all  these  plans  came  to  naught. 

Anderson  continued  to  take  out  patents  down  to  as 
late  as  1858.  He  devoted  more  than  thirty  years  of 
his  life  to  the  promotion  of  steam  locomotion  on 
common  roads. 

ROBERT  DAVIDSON 

Robert  Davidson,  of  Aberdeen,  was  probably  the 
first  to  make  an  electrically  propelled  carriage  large 
enough  to  carry  passengers.  This  he  did  in  1839. 
His  carriage  could  carry  two  persons  when  traveling 
over  a  fairly  rough  road,  and  though  the  prospects 
were  enticing  enough  to  cause  investment  in  the 
enterprise,  Davidson's  subsequent  work  was  on  rail 
vehicles. 

W.  G.  HEATON 

W.  G.  and  R.  Heaton,  of  Birmingham,  England, 
built  several  steam  carriages  which  operated  with 
various  degrees  of  success  in  their  neighborhood. 
Their  patent  was  dated  in  October,  1830.  The  patent 
aimed  particularly  at  the  guidance  of  a  locomotive 
carriage,  and  the  management  of  the  steam  appa- 
ratus so  that  the  power  and  speed  might  be  accom- 
modated to  the  nature  of  the  road,  the  quantity  of  the 
load,  and  so  on. 

For  the  purpose  of  steering  the  carriage,  a  vertical 
spindle  was  placed  at  some  distance  before  the  axle 
of  the  front  wheels  and  on  its  lower  end  a  small 
148 


NOTED  INVESTIGATORS 

drum  was  fixed.  Around  this  drum  was  coiled  a 
chain  with  its  middle  fixed  upon  the  drum,  and  its- 
ends  made  secure  to  the  front  axle  formed  a  triangle 
with  the  drum,  situated  at  the  angle  opposite  the 
longest  side.  The  other  end  of  the  vertical  spindle 
was  connected  with  a  frame  situated  in  front  of  the 
coachman's  or  rather  the  steersman's  seat  and  here 
on  the  spindle  was  a  horizontal  beveled-toothed 
wheel.  Over  this  wheel  an  axis  extended,  terminat- 
ing in  two  crank  handles  proceeding  from  the  axes 
in  different  directions,  so  that  one  was  down  when 
the  other  was  up.  Upon  this  axis  was  fixed  another 
beveled-toothed  wheel  taking  into  the  first.  When 
these  wheels  were  turned  in  one  direction  the  right- 
hand  fore  wheel  of  the  carriage  advanced  and  the 
coach  turned  towards  the  left,  while  when  they  were 
turned  in  the  other  direction  the  left-hand  wheel  ad- 
vanced and  the  carriage  turned  towards  the  right.. 

The  driving  wheels  were  connected  with  the  axle 
by  means  of  a  pair  of  ratchets  furnished  with  a  dou- 
ble set  of  ratchet  teeth  and  a  reversing  pall.  By  this 
one  wheel  could  be  advanced  or  backed  while  the 
other  remained  stationary,  or  moving  in  a  contrary 
direction,  an  arrangement  necessary  for  turning  and 
backing.  The  steersman  controlled  the  reversing 
pail  by  connecting  rods  and  lever. 

Motion  was  communicated  to  the  driving  wheels 
by  a  double  set  of  spur  wheel  gear,  arranged  to  give 
different  powers  or  velocities,  by  having  both  a  large 
and  a  small  wheel  fixed  on  the  driving  as  well  as  the 
driven  axis.  By  shifting  the  large  wheel  on  the  driv* 
ing  axis  into  gear  with  the  small  wheel  on  the  driven 
axis  speed  was  obtained,  and  by  shifting  their  rela- 
149 


AUTOMOBILE  BIOGRAPHIES 

tive  position  till  the  small  wheel  on  the  driving  axis 
came  into  gear  with  the  large  wheel  on  the  driven 
axis,  power  was  obtained  at  the  expense  of  speed. 
These  two  axes  were  kept  at  the  same  distance  from 
each  other  by  means  of  connecting  rods,  although  the 
relative  positions  might  be  changed  by  the  motion  of 
the  carriage  on  rough  roads. 

In  August,  1833,  the  Heatons  placed  a  steam  drag 
on  the  road  between  Worcester  and  Birmingham. 
A  slight  accident  occurred  at  the  start,  but  after  re- 
pairs were  made  the  trial  was  a  success.  Attached 
to  the  engine  was  a  stage-coach,  carrying  twenty 
passengers,  the  load  weighing  nearly  two  tons. 
Lickey  Hill  was  ascended,  a  rise  of  one  in  nine,  and 
even  one  in  eight  in  some  places.  Many  parts  of  the 
hill  were  very  soft,  but  by  putting  both  wheels  in 
gear  they  ascended  to  the  summit,  seven  hundred 
yards  in  nine  minutes.  A  company  was  formed  in 
Birmingham  to  construct  and  run  these  carriages, 
subject  to  the  condition  of  keeping  up  an  average 
speed  of  ten  miles  an  hour.  A  new  carriage  was 
built  and  tried  in  1834,  but  after  trials,  the  Messrs. 
Heaton  dissolved  their  contract,  as  they  were  unable 
to  do  more  than  seven  or  eight  miles  an  hour.  After 
spending  upwards  of  ten  thousand  dollars  in  endeav- 
ors to  effect  steam  traveling,  they  retired  from  the 
•field,  stating  that  the  wear  and  tear  were  excessive 
at  ten  miles  an  hour,  and  that  the  carriage  was  heavy, 
and  wasteful  in  steam. 

F.  HILL 

An  English  engineer,  connected  with  the  Deptford 
Chemical  Works,   Hill  was  among  the  first  to  be 
150 


NOTED   INVESTIGATORS 

interested  in  steam-road  locomotion.  He  was 
familiar  with  Hancock's  experiments  and  made  a 
carriage  of  his  own  that  was  tried  in  1840.  He  jour- 
neyed to  Sevenoaks  and  elsewhere  and  ran  up  steep 
hills  with  the  carriage,  fully  loaded,  at  twelve  miles 
an  hour,  and  on  the  level  at  sixteen  miles  an  hour. 
He  adopted  the  compensating  gear  that  was  invented 
by  Richard  Roberts  and  that  by  some  writers  has 
been  credited  to  him. 

To  put  Hill's  patents  to  practical  use  The  Gen- 
eral Steam  Carriage  Company  was  formed  in  1843. 
The  probable  success  of  the  company  was  based  upon 
the  belief  that  there  was  a  demand  for  additional 
road  accommodations  in  order  that  road  locomotion 
should  counteract  the  exorbitant  charges  made  by  the 
gigantic  railway  monopoly  for  conveying  goods  short 
distances.  The  company  stated  in  its  prospectus  uthat 
while  they  confidently  believe  the  improved  steam 
coach  which  they  have  engaged  and  propose  to  em- 
ploy in  the  first  instance  to  be  the  most  perfect  now 
known  in  England,  they  do  not  bind  themselves  to 
adhere  to  any  particular  invention,  but  will  avail 
themselves  of  every  discovery  to1  promote  steam 
coach  conveyance." 

Trial  trips  were  made  on  the  Windsor,  Brighton, 
Hastings,  and  similar  roads,  and  with  success.  Once 
the  carriage  made  a  trip  to  Hastings  and  back,  a 
distance  of  one  hundred  and  twenty-eight  miles,  in 
one  day,  half  the  time  occupied  by  the  stage  coaches. 
The  Mechanic's  Magazine  said :  "We  accompanied 
Hill,  about  a  year  ago,  in  a  short  run  up  and  down 
the  hills  about  Blackheath,  Bromley,  and  neighbor- 
hood ;  and  we  had  again  the  pleasure  of  accompany- 


AUTOMOBILE  BIOGRAPHIES 

ing  him  in  a  delightful  trip,  on  the  Hastings  Road,  as 
far  as  Tunbridge  and  back.  The  manner  in  which 
his  carriage  took  all  the  hills,  both  in  the  ascent  and 
the  descent,  proved  how  completely  every  difficulty 
on  this  head  had  been  surmounted." 

In  the  Hill  carriage,  both  the  coach  and  the  ma- 
chinery were  erected  upon  a  strong  frame  mounted 
upon  substantial  springs.  In  the  rear  were  the 
boiler,  furnace,  and  water  tanks,  with  a  place  for  the 
engineer  and  fireman.  In  front  was  a  coach  body 
with  seats  for  six  inside,  three  on  the  box,  and  the 
conductor  in  front.  The  front  part  of  the  carriage 
was  also  suspended  upon  springs.  The  carriage  was 
propelled  by  a  pair  of  ten-inch  cylinders  and  pistons, 
horizontally  placed  beneath  the  carriage.  These 
acted  upon  two  nine-inch  cranks,  coupled  to  the  main 
axle  through  compensating  gear ;  the  two  six-foot 
six-inch  diameter  driving  wheels  had  the  full  power 
of  the  engines  passed  through  them.  The  weight  of 
the  boiler  when  empty  was  two  thousand  three  hun- 
dred pounds,  and  it  had  a  capacity  of  about  sixty 
gallons  of  water,  while  one  hundred  gallons  more 
were  contained  in  the  tanks.  The  total  weight  of  the 
carriage,  including  water,  coke,  and  twelve  pas- 
sengers, was  less  than  four  tons.  On  heavy  and 
rough  roads  the  steam  pressure  was  seventy  pounds 
per  square  inch,  but  on  good  roads  only  sixty  pounds. 
The  average  speed  was  sixteen  miles  an  hour,  but  on 
a  level  t\venty  miles  an  hour  was  reached.  As  late 
as  1843,  Hill's  carriages  were  running  from  London 
to  Birmingham,  having  been  in  operation  four  or 
five  years.  Smooth  in  motion,  they  carried  their 
passengers  comfortably,  but  soon  went  out  of  use. 

'5* 


NOTED  INVESTIGATORS 

GOODMAN 

Early  in  the  forties  a  small  road  locomotive  was 
made  by  Goodman,  of  Southwark,  London.  It  was 
worked  by  a  pair  of  direct-acting  engines,  coupled  to 
the  crank  shaft.  A  chain  pinion  on  the  crank  shaft 
transmitted  motion  to  the  main  axle  through  an  end- 
less pitch  chain  working  over  a  chain  wheel  of  larger 
diameter  on  the  driving  shaft.  The  smoke  from  the 
boiler  was  conducted  by  a  flue  placed  beneath  the  car- 
riage. The  vehicle  had  a  speed  of  from  ten  to  twelve 
miles  an  hour. 

NORRGBER 

A  correspondent  of  The  Mechanic's  Magazine,  of 
London,  wrote  in  1843  :  "Norrgber,  of  Sweden,  a 
locksmith  and  an  ingenious  mechanic,  made  a  steam 
carriage  which  ran  between  Copenhagen  and  Corsoer, 
carrying  thirty  passengers,  the  engine  being  of  eight 
horse-power." 

J.  K.  FISHER 

A  small  steam  carriage,  that  in  general  character 
was  like  a  railroad  locomotive,  was  designed  by  J. 
K.  Fisher,  of  New  York,  in  1840.  It  was  not  until 
1853,  however,  that  he  went  beyond  this.  Then  he 
built  another  carriage,  with  driving  wheels  five  feet 
in  diameter,  and  two  steam  cylinders  four  inches  in. 
diameter,  with  ten-inch  stroke.  This  carriage  at- 
tained a  speed  of  fifteen  miles  an  hour  on  good  pave- 
ments. During  the  next  two  years,  Fisher  made 
t  many  trips,  sometimes  running  twelve  miles  an  hour 
without  excessive  wear.  In  his  later  engines  he  in- 
troduced several  novelties,  among  them  being 
153 


AUTOMOBILE  BIOGRAPHIES 

parallel  connections  between  the  crank  shaft  and  the 
driving  axle.  In  the  steering  gear  a  screw  was 
placed  across  the  front  part  of  the  carriage  carrying 
a  nut,  to  which  the  end  oi  an  elongated  reverted  pole 
was  jointed.  The  screw  was  turned  by  bevel  gear- 
ing, one  wheel  being  keyed  to  the  end  o>f  the  screw, 
and  the  other  to  the  steerage  rod,  the  opposite  end  of 
this  rod  having  a  lever  placed  within  easy  access  of 
the  footplate.  Fisher's  carriages  were  driven  by 
direct-acting  engines,  one  cylinder  on  each  side  of  the 
smoke-box. 

R.  W.  THOMPSON 

Born  in  Stonehaven,  England,  in  1822.  Died, 
March  8,  1873. 

R.  W.  Thompson  came  to  the  United  States  in 
early  life,  but  returned  to  England  and  engaged  in 
scientific  experimenting  and  studying,  and  in  engi- 
neering at  Aberdeen  and  Dundee.  He  invented  a  ro- 
tary engine  during  this  period  of  his  life.  In  1846, 
being  then  in  business  for  himself,  he  conceived  the 
idea  of  india-rubber  tires  and  perfected  this  in  1876. 
In  December  of  that  year  he  made  a  small  road  loco- 
motive to  draw  an  omnibus  and  this  was  sent  to  the 
Island  of  Ceylon.  Other  road  steamers  of  Thomp- 
son's design  were  manufactured  and  sent  to-  India 
and  elsewhere. 

ANTHONY  BERNHARD 

In   1848,   a  compressed-air  carriage  invented  by 

Anthony  Bernhard,  Baron  von  Rathen,  was  built  in 

England.    It  weighed  three  tons,  and  on  its  first  trip 

was  driven  at  a  speed  of  eight  miles  an  hour.    Upon 

154 


NOTED  INVESTIGATORS 

one  occasion  it  made  twelve  miles  an  hour  on  a  trip 
from  Putney  to  Wandsworth,  carrying  twenty  pas- 
sengers. Until  near  1870,  Baron  von  Rathen  was 
engaged  in  inventing  compressed-air  engines. 

BATTIN 

In  1856,  Joseph  Battin,  of  Newark,  N.  J.,  con- 
structed a  steam  carriage  with  a  vertical  boiler  and 
oscillating  engines. 

RICHARD  DUDGEON 

A  small  locomotive  for  the  common  roads  was 
built  in  1857,  by  Richard  Dudgeon,  an  engineer,  of 
New  York.  It  had  two  steam  cylinders,  each  three 
inches  in  diameter  and  with  sixteen-inch  stroke,  and 
drew  a  light  carriage  at  ten  miles  an  hour  on  gravel 
roads.  The  carriage  was  destroyed  by  fire  at  the 
New  York  Crystal  Palace  in  1858.  Dudgeon  is  said 
to  have  afterward  built  another  carriage,  which  was 
larger  and  more  clumsy  than  the  other.  A  few  years 
ago  this  was  discovered  in  an  old  barn  in  Locust  Val- 
ley, L.  I.  It  was  fixed  up  and  started  out  and  demon- 
strated that,  old  as  it  was,  it  could  go  at  a  speed  of 
more  than  ten  miles  an  hour. 

LOUGH  AND  MESSENGER 

In  1858,  Messrs.  Lough  and  Messenger,  of  S win- 
don,  England,  designed  and  erected  a  steam-road 
locomotive  which  for  two  years  ran  at  fifteen  miles 
an  hour  on  level  roads,  and  six  miles  an  hour  up 
grades  of  one  in  twenty.  The  engine  had  two*  cylin- 
ders, each  three  and  one-half  inches  in  diameter  and 
with  five-inch  stroke,  working  direct  on  to  the  crank 
155 


AUTOMOBILE  BIOGRAPHIES 

axle.  The  driving  wheels  were  three  and  one-half 
feet  in  diameter,  and  the  leading  wheels  two  feet  in 
diameter.  The  vertical  boiler  fixed  on  the  frame  was 
worked  at  one-himdred-and-twenty-pound  pressure. 
The  tanks  held  forty  gallons  of  feed  water.  The 
total  weight  of  the  locomotive  was  eight  hundred 
pounds. 

THOMAS  RICKETT 

When  the  revival  of  interest  in  the  common-road 
steam  locomotive  began  in  England,  about  1857, 
Thomas  Rickett,  of  Castle  Foundry,  Buckingham, 
was  one  of  the  first  to  give  attention  to  the  subject. 
He  built  a  road  locomotive  in  1858  for  the  Marquis 
of  Stafford.  This  engine  had  two  driving  wheels 
and  a  steering  wheel.  The  boiler  was  at  the  back 
with  the  steam  cylinders  horizontally  on  each  side 
of  it.  Three  passengers  were  carried. 

The  carriage  was  steered  by  means  of  a  lever  con- 
nected with  the  fork  of  the  front  wheel.  The  cylinders 
were  three  inches  in  diameter,  with  nine-inch  stroke; 
the  working  steam  pressure  was  one  hundred  pounds 
per  square  inch.  The  driving  wheels  were  three  feet 
in  diameter.  The  weight  of  the  carriage  when  fully 
loaded  was  only  three  thousand  pounds.  On  level 
roads  the  speed  was  about  twelve  miles  an  hour. 

An  account  of  one  of  the  trips  in  1859  was  as  fol- 
lows in  the  columns  of  The  Engineer :  "Lord  Staf- 
ford and  party  made  another  trip  with  the  steam  car- 
riage from  Buckingham  to  Wolverton.  His  lord- 
ship drove  and  steered,  and  although  the  roads  were 
very  heavy,  they  were  not  more  than  an  hour  in  run- 
ning the  nine  miles  to  Old  Wolverton.  His  lordship 

156 


NOTED   INVESTIGATORS 

has  repeatedly  said  that  it  is  guided  with  the  great- 
est ease  and  precision.  It  was  designed  by  Mr. 
Rickett  to  run  ten  miles  an  hour.  One  mile  in  five 
minutes  has  been  attained,  at  which  it  was  perfectly 
steady,  the  centre  of  gravity  being  not  more  than  two 
feet  from  the  ground.  A  few  days  afterwards  this 
little  engine  started  from  Messrs.  Hayes'  Works, 
Stoney  Stratford,  with  a  party  consisting  of  the 
Marquis  of  Stafford,  Lord  Alfred  Paget,  and  two 
Hungarian  noblemen.  They  proceeded  through  the 
town  of  Stoney  Stratford  at  a  rapid  pace,  and  after 
a  short  trip  returned  to  the  Wolverton  railway  sta- 
tion. The  trip  was  in  all  respects  successful,  and 
shows  beyond  a  doubt  that  steam  locomotion  for 
common  roads  is  practicable." 

Two  other  engines  were  built  by  Rickett,  one  of 
them  for  the  Earl  of  Caithness.  Some  improve- 
ments were  installed  in  this  carriage,  which  was  in- 
tended to  carry  three  passengers.  The  weight  of  the 
carriage,  fully  loaded,  was  five  thousand  pounds. 

In  this  carriage,  the  Earl  of  Caithness  traveled 
from  Inverness  to  his  seat,  Borrogill  Castle,  within 
a  few  miles  of  John  o'  Groat's  House.  He  describes 
his  trip  as  follows :  "I  may  state  that  such  a  feat  as 
going  over  the  Ord  of  Caithness  has  never  before 
been  accomplished  by  steam,  as  I  believe  we  rose  one 
thousand  feet  in  about  five  miles.  The  Ord  is  one  of 
the  largest  and  steepest  hills  in  Scotland.  The  turns 
in  the  road  are  very  sharp.  All  this  I  got  over  with- 
out trouble.  There  is,  I  am  confident,  no  difficulty 
in  driving  a  steam  carriage  on  a  common  road.  It  is 
cheap,  and  on  a  level  I  got  as  much  as  nineteen  miles 
an  hour."  The  Earl  of  Caithness  brought  the  trial 
157 


AUTOMOBILE  BIOGRAPHIES 

to  a  successful  result,  and  some  expert  authorities 
jumped  to  the  conclusion  that  at  once  steam  traveling 
upon  the  high  roads  of  England  would  be  availed  of 
to  a  large  extent ;  but  that  did  not  happen. 

In  1864,  Mr.  Rickett  furnished  an  engine  for 
working  a  passenger  and  light  goods  service  in 
Spain,  intended  to  carry  thirty  passengers  up  an  in- 
cline of  one  in  twelve,  at  ten  miles  an  hour.  The 
steam  cylinders  were  eight  inches  in  diameter,  and 
the  driving  wheels  four  feet  in  diameter.  The  boiler 
would  sustain  a  pressure  of  two  hundred  pounds. 
Rickett's  later  engines  had  spur  wheels;  but  his  last 
engines  were  direct-acting.  In  November,  1864,  he 
says :  "The  direct-acting  engines  mount  inclines  of 
one  in  ten  easily ;  whether  at  eight,  four,  two,  or  one 
mile  an  hour,  on  inclines  with  five  tons  behind  them, 
they  stick  to  their  work  better  than  geared  engines." 
DANIEL  ADAMSON 

In  1858  the  firm  of  Daniel  Adamson  &  Co.,  of 
Dukinfield,  near  Manchester,  England,  built  a  com- 
mon-road locomotive  for  a  Mr.  Schmidt.  A  multi- 
tubular  boiler  was  used,  two  and  one-half  feet  in 
diameter  and  five  and  one-half  feet  long,  with  a 
working  pressure  of  one  hundred  and  fifty  pounds 
per  square  inch.  The  engine,  which  weighed  five 
thousand  six  hundred  pounds  and  was  borne  on  three 
wheels,  was  calculated  to  run  at  eight  miles  an  hour. 
A  steam  cylinder  of  six-inch  diameter  was  attached 
to  each  side  of  the  locomotive,  and  these  cylinders 
actuated  a  pair  of  driving  wheels  three  feet  six  inches 
in  diameter. 

Mr.  Schmidt  gave  this  vehicle  a  thorough  trying 
out  and  especially  raced  it  with  several  competitors. 

158 


NOTED   INVESTIGATORS 

On  one  of  these  races,  in  1867,  with  a  Boulton  steam 
carriage,  the  start  was  made  from  Ashton-under- 
Lyne,  for  the  show  ground  at  Old  Trafford,  a  dis- 
tance of  over  eight  miles.  Although  the  Adamson 
engine  was  the  larger,  the  smaller  one  easily  passed 
it  during  the  first  mile,  and  kept  a  good  lead  all  the 
way,  arriving  at  Old  Trafford  under  the  hour. 

Mr.  Schmidt  sent  his  road  locomotive  to  the 
Havre  Exhibition,  in  1868,  and  a  trial  of  its  powers 
was  made  by  French  engineers,  and  M.  Nicole, 
director  of  the  exhibition.  Mr.  Schmidt  conducted 
the  engine  himself,  and  to  it  was  attached  an  omnibus 
containing  the  commissioners.  The  engine  and  car- 
riage traversed  several  streets  of  Havre  and  mounted 
a  sharp  incline.  Other  trips  were  made  to  several 
villages  in  the  neighborhood  of  the  exhibition,  and 
the  engine  behaved  very  satisfactorily. 

STIRLING 

In  a  road  steamer  designed  by  Stirling,  of  Kil- 
marnock,  in  1859,  the  five  traveling  wheels  were 
mounted  upon  springs.  A  single  wheel  was  used  as 
a  driver,  and  more  or  less  weight  was  thrown  upon 
this  wheel.  The  leading  and  trailing  wheels  swiveled 
in  concert,  in  opposite  directions,  by  means  of  right 
and  left  hand  worms  and  worm  wheels.  The  car- 
riage was  thus  made  to  move  in  a  curve  of  compara- 
tively short  radius. 

W.  O.  CARRETT 

In  1860,  George  Salt,  of  Saltshire,  England,  em- 
ployed W.  O.  Carrett,  of  the  firm  of  Carrett,  Mar- 
shall &  Co.,  proprietors  of  the  Gun  Foundry  at  Leeds, 
159 


AUTOMOBILE  BIOGRAPHIES 

to  design  and  build  a  steam  pleasure  carriage  for  him. 
The  carriage  was  first  shown  and  exhibited  at  the 
Royal  Show  held  in  Leeds,  1861,  and  likewise  at  the 
London  Exhibition,  1862.  It  had  two  steam  cyl- 
inders, six  inches  in  diameter  and  w^ith  eight-inch 
stroke.  The  boiler  was  of  the  locomotive  multi- 
tubular  type,  two  feet  six  inches  in  diameter,  and 
five  feet  three  inches  long.  It  had  a  working  pressure 
of  one  hundred  and  fifty  pounds  per  square  inch,  the 
test  pressure  being  three  hundred  pounds.  The  loco- 
motive was  mounted  upon  two  driving  wheels,  each 
four  feet  in  diameter,  made  of  steel,  and  a  lead- 
ing wheel  was  three  feet  in  diameter.  Seats  were 
provided  for  nine  persons,  including  the  steerer  and 
the  fireman.  The  traveling  speed  was  fifteen  miles 
an  hour ;  and  the  weight  of  the  carriage,  fully  loaded, 
was  five  tons.  Motion  was  communicated  from  the 
crank  shaft  to  the  driving  axle  through  spur  gearing. 
The  English  magazine,  Engineering,  in  an  article 
in  June,  1866,  said:  "This  steam  carriage,  made  by 
Carrett,  Marshall  &  Co.,  was  probably  the  most  re- 
markable locomotive  ever  made.  True,  it  did  little 
good  for  itself  as  a  steam  carriage,  and  its  owner  at 
last  made  a  present  of  it — much  as  an  Eastern  prince 
might  send  a  friend  a  white  elephant — to  that  en- 
thusiastic amateur,  Mr.  Frederick  Hodges,  who 
christened  it  the  Fly-by-Night,  and  who  did  fly,  and 
no  mistake,  through  the  Kentish  villages  when  most 
honest  people  were  in  their  beds.  Its  enterprising 
owner  was  repeatedly  pulled  up  and  fined,  and  to  this 
day  his  exploits  are  remembered  against  him." 
Hodges  ran  the  engine  eight  hundred  miles ;  he  had 
six  summonses  in  six  weeks,  and  one  was  for  run- 
160 


NOTED  INVESTIGATORS 

ning  the  engine  thirty  miles  an  hour.  It  was  after- 
wards altered  to  resemble  a  fire  engine  and  the  pas- 
sengers were  equipped  like  firemen,  wearing  brass 
helmets.  The  device  did  not  deceive  the  police,  and 
finally  the  carriage  was  made  over  into  a  real  self- 
moving  fire  engine. 

RICHARD  TANGYE 

The  steam  carriage  built  by  the  Tangye  Brothers, 
of  England,  about  1852,  was  a  simple  affair.  It  had 
seating  capacity  in  the  body  for  six  or  eight  persons, 
while  three  or  four  more  could  be  accommodated  in 
front.  The  driver  who  sat  in  front  had  full  control 
of  the  stop  valve  and  reversing  lever,  so  that  the 
engine  could  be  stopped  or  reversed  by  him  as  occa- 
sion required.  The  speed  of  twenty  miles  an  hour 
could  be  attained,  and  the  engine  with  its  load  easily 
ascended  the  steepest  gradients. 

Richard  Tangye,  in  his  autobiography,  speaks  of 
his  experience  with  this  carriage  in  the  following 
terms  :  "Great  interest  was  manifested  in  our  experi- 
ment, and  it  soon  became  evident  that  there  was  an 
'opening  for  a  considerable  business  in  these  engines, 
and  we  made  our  preparations  accordingly,  but  the 
'wisdom'  of  Parliament  made  it  impossible.  The 
squires  became  alarmed  lest  their  horses  should  take 
fright;  and  although  a  judge  ruled  that  a  horse  that 
would  not  stand  the  sight  or  sound  of  a  locomotive, 
in  these  clays  of  steam,  constituted  a  public  danger, 
and  that  its  owner  should  be  punished  and  not  the 
owner  of  the  locomotive,  an  act  was  passed  providing 
that  no  engine  should  travel  more  than  four  miles  an 
hour  on  the  public  roads.  Thus  was  the  trade  in 
161 


AUTOMOBILE  BIOGRAPHIES 

"quick-speed  locomotives  strangled  in  its  cradle;  and 

-  the  inhabitants  of  country  districts  left  unprovided 

'  with  im'pfoved  facilities  for  traveling."    The  Tahgye 

carriage  thus  driven  out  of  England  was  sent  to 

India,  where  it  continued  to  give  good  service. 

T.  W.  COWAN 

At  the  London  Exhibition  of  1862,  the  Messrs. 
Yarrow  and  Hilditch,  of  Barnsbufy,  near  London, 
exhibited  a  steam  carriage,  designed  and  made  by  T. 
W.  Cowan,  of  Greenwich.  Eleven  passengers,  be- 
sides the  driver  and  the  fireman,  were  carried  and  the 
vehicle  with  full  load  weighed  two  tons  and  a  half. 
The  toiler,  of  steel,  was  a  vertical  multitubular  two 
feet  in  diameter  and  three  feet  nine  inches  high.  The 
frame  of  the  carriage  was  of  ash,  lined  with  wrought- 
iron  plates,  and  to  the  outside  of  the  bottom  sill  were 
two  iron  foundation  plates,  to  which  the  cylinders 
and  other  parts  were  attached.  The  cylinders  were 
five  inches  in  diameter  and  had  nine-inch  stroke. 

CHARLES  T.  HAYBALL 

A  quick-speed  road  locomotive  was  made  by 
Charles  T.  Hayball,  of  Lymington,  Hants,  England, 
in  1864.  The  machinery  was  mounted  upon  a 
wrought-iron  frame,  that  was  carried  upon  three 
wheels.  The  two  driving  wheels  had  an  inner  and 
an  outer  tire,  and  the  space  between  was  filled  with 
wood  to  reduce  noise  and  lessen  the  concussion.  The 
two  steam  cylinders  were  each  four  and  one-half 
inches  in  diameter  and  with  six-inch  stroke.  Hay- 
ball  used  a  vertical  boiler,  two  feet  two  inches  in 
diameter,  and  four  feet  Jiigh,  working  at  a  pressure 


NOTED  INVESTIGATORS 

of  one  hundred  and  fifty  pounds.  The  carriage  ran 
up  an  incline  of  one  in  twelve  at  sixteen  miles  an 
hour,  and  traveled  four  miles  an  hour  in  fourteen 
minutes,  up  hill  and  down,  with  ten  passengers  on 
board. 

ISAAC  W.  BOULTON 

In  August,  1867,  Thomas  Boulton  says:  "I  ran 
a  small  road  locomotive  constructed  by  Isaac  W. 
Boulton,  of  Ashton-under-Lyne,  from  here  through 
Manchester,  Eccles,  Warrington,  Preston  Brook,  to 
Chester,  paraded  the  principal  streets  of  Chester,  and 
returned  home,  the  distance  being  over  ninety  miles 
in  one  day  without  a  stoppage  except  for  water." 
Boulton's  engine  had  one  cylinder  four  and  one-half 
inches  in  diameter,  and  with  nine-inch  stroke.  The 
boiler  worked  at  one  hundred  and  thirty  pounds  pres- 
sure per  square  inch.  The  driving  wheels  were  five 
feet  in  diameter.  Two  speeds  were  obtained  by 
means  of  spur  gearing  between  the  crank  shaft  and 
the  counter  shaft.  On  the  Chester  trip  six  persons, 
and  sometimes  eight  and  ten  passengers,  were  car- 
ried. 

'  i 
ARMSTRONG 

The  virtues  of  the  horseless  vehicle  early  pene- 
trated to  India.  Many  English  manufacturers  sent 
carriages  there.  Some  time  in  1868,  a  steam  car- 
riage, with  two  steam  cylinders,  each  three  inches  in 
diameter,  and  with  six-inch  stroke,  was  made  by 
Armstrong,  of  Rawilpindee,  Punjab.  A  separate 
stop  valve  was  fitted  to  each  cylinder.  The  boiler 
was  fifteen  inches  in  diameter  and  three  feet  high, 


AUTOMOBILE  BIOGRAPHIES 

and  worked  steam  pressure  of  one  hundred  pounds 
per  square  inch.  Twelve  miles  an  hour  on  the  level, 
and  six  miles  an  hour  up  grade  of  one  in  twenty, 
were  made.  The  driving  wheels  wrere  three  feet  in 
diameter. 

PIERRE  RAVEL 

Ravel,  of  France,  planned  in  1868  a  steam  vehicle, 
and  about  1870  completed  the  construction  of  one  at 
the  barracks  at  Saint-Owen.  Then  came  the  declara- 
tion of  war  with  Prussia,  and  the  barracks,  being 
within  the  zone  of  fortification,  the  vehicle  was  lost 
or  destroyed.  There  is  no  certainty  that  it  was  ever 
unearthed  after  peace  was  declared. 

L.  T.  PYOTT 

Before  1876,  a  motor  vehicle  was  invented  by  L. 
T.  Pyott,  who  was  then  a  foreman  with  the  Bald- 
win Locomotive  Works  in  Philadelphia.  The  car- 
riage, which  could  carry  seven  persons  at  the  rate  of 
twenty  miles  an  hour,  cost  about  two  thousand  two 
hundred  dollars,  and  weighed  nearly  two  tons.  It 
Avas  shown  at  the  Centennial  Exposition  in  Phila- 
delphia in  1876,  but  was  not  allowed  to  run  on  the 
streets. 

A.    RlCHTER 

An  engineer  and  mechanician  of  Neider-Bielan, 
Oberlaneitz,  Germany,  Richter  secured  in  1877  a 
patent  for  a  vehicle  that  was  propelled  by  a  motor 
consisting  of  a  stack  or  battery  of  elliptic  springs 
horizontally  disposed,  which  were  compressed  by  a 
charge  of  powerful  powder  exploded  in  what  was 
164 


NOTED  INVESTIGATORS 

practically  a  cannon.  The  subsequent  expansion 
transmitted  the  driving  effort  to  the  wheels  by  a  rack 
of  gears.  The  success  of  this  vehicle  is  not  generally 
known. 

RAFFARD 

In  1 88 1,  Raffard,  a  French  engineer,  made  a  tri- 
cycle and  a  tram-car  that  is  said  to  have  been  the 
first  electric  automobile  which  ran  satisfactorily. 

CHARLES  JEANTEAUD 

It  is  claimed  for  Jeanteaud  that  he  built  a  four- 
wheeled  electric  vehicle  about  1881,  which  was 
changed  in  1887  by  the  addition  of  an  Immisch 
motor.  In  1890  he  constructed  a  three-wheeled 
steam  vehicle  for  five  persons,  having  the  advice  and 
interest  of  Archdeacon.  In  June,  1895,  at  the  Paris- 
Bordeaux  race,  he  entered  an  electric  automobile 
and  established  battery  relays  every  twenty-five  kilo- 
meters, but  without  success  so  far  as  speed  was  in- 
volved in  comparison  with  the  gasoline  cars.  In 
1897  he  constructed  a  gasoline  phaeton,  but  his  sub- 
sequent work  has  been  primarily  confined  to  the 
electric. 

SYLVESTER  HAYWOOD  ROPER 

As  early  as  1850,  Sylvester  Hay  wood  Roper,  of 
Roxbury,  Mass.,  began  experimenting  with  steam  for 
street- vehicle  propulsion.  In  1882,  when  he  was 
seventy-three  years  of  age,  he  fitted  a  Columbia  bi- 
cycle with  a  miniature  engine,  and  with  this  he  could 
run  seventy  miles  on  one  charge  of  fue4.  His  bicycle 
weighed  one  hundred  and  sixty-five  pounds.  He  en- 

165 


AUTOMOBILE  BIOGRAPHIES 

gaged  in  many  track  events  and  his  record  for  three 
runs  of  one-third  of  a  mile  each,  was  forty-two, 
thirty-nine  and  thirty-seven  seconds. 

COPELAND 

A  tandem  tricycle  with  a  vertical  boiler  and  a  two- 
cylinder  vertical  engine  was  built  by  Copeland,  of 
Philadelphia,  in  1882.  Kerosene  was  used  to  fire  the 
boiler.  It  is  said  that  over  two  hundred  of  these 
machines  were  built. 

G.  BOUTON 

An  ingenious  and  practical  engineer,  Bouton  made 
various  mechanical  devices,  but  it  is  claimed  that 
from  a  clever  toy  came  the  associations  which  have 
resulted  in  the  now  famous  firm,  DeDion-Bouton, 
with  which  he  is  connected.  It  is  said  Compte  De- 
Dion  saw  this  toy  and  on  asking  for  the  maker,  met 
Bouton.  Thus  came  the  partnership,  in  1882,  with 
Bouton  and  Trepardoux.  Bouton  made  a  steam  tri- 
cycle in  1884,  containing  the  remarkable  light  and 
efficient  boiler  of  his  invention,  which  for  years  re- 
mained the  most  important  contribution  of  the  firm 
to  this  art.  In  1885  a  quadricycle  was  made,  and  the 
success  attending  the  runs  made  with  this,  in  which 
Merrelle  co-operated,  was  such  as  to  bring  forth  the 
personal  ideas  of  DeDion  in  so  strong  a  manner  that 
Trepardoux  and  Merrelle  severed  their  connections 
with  the  firm. 

The  real  beginning  of  the  work  of  this  firm  was 

in   1884,  and  the  several  years  following  saw  the 

production  of  numerous  steam  machines,  including 

phaetons,  dog  carts,  and  a  variety  of  other  types. 

1 66 


L  _NpTED   INVESTIGATORS _ 

Even  as  late  as  1897  heavy  steam  chars-banes  were 
made  by  them,  and  that  year  also  saw  their  well- 
known  thirty-five-passenger,  six- wheeled  coach, 
Pauline,  on  the  streets  of  Paris — a  vehicle  which  cost 
over  twenty-six  thousand  francs,  and  had  a  thirty- 
five  horse-power  steam  tractor.  This  vehicle  had 
been  preceded  by  a  somewhat  similar  one  con- 
structed in  1893  on  the  old  idea  of  a  mechanical 
horse  attached  to  an  ordinary  'bus  body  from  which 
the  front  wheels  had  been  removed. 

In  1895,  DeDion-Bouton  produced  their  first  liquid 
hydro-carbon  engine  vehicle — a  tricycle  with  air- 
cooled  motor  and  dry-battery  ignition,  which  is  so 
well  known  to  everyone  in  the  industry  to-day. 
These  were  manufactured  in  large  numbers,  and 
were  followed  by  larger  gasoline  vehicles  into  which 
they  introduced  their  engine,  namely,  a  vertical  posi- 
tion. In  1899,  their  three-passenger,  four-wheeled 
vehicle,  and  in  1900  a  six-passenger  vehicle,  made 
good  reputations.  Since  then  their  large  factory  at 
Putaux,  France,  well  known  under  the  name  of 
DeDion-Bouton  et  Cie,  has  been  continually  crowded 
with  work  on  vehicles,  and  with  the  manufacture  of 
their  motors  which  are  still  sold  independently  to 
other  makers  in  France,  as  well  as  in  other  countries. 
In  fact  the  manufacture  of  engines  and  parts  might 
be  said  to  be  now  their  main  work. 

COUNT  A.  DEDION 

'Count  DeDion's  interest  in  an  ingenious  mechan- 
ical device  constructed  by  Bouton,  led  to  his  back- 
ing the  enterprise  now  so  well  known  under  his  name. 
His  activity  in  the  Automobile  Club  of  France,  and 


AUTOMOBILE  BIOGRAPHIES 

in  all  the  sporting  events  in  the  past  ten  years,  has 
in  fact  brought  him  into  far  more  prominence  than 
his  associate,  Bouton.  His  interest  and  energy  in 
connection  with  his  company  are  well  known,  and 
though  the  credit  for  the  mechanical  work  must  un- 
doubtedly be  given  to  Bouton,  DeDion  is  largely  re- 
sponsible for  the  great  success  and  general  promi- 
nence of  the  company. 

ARMAND  PEUGEOT 

In  1885,  and  again  in  1889,  Armand  Peugeot,  a 
French  inventor  and  manufacturer,  brought  up  the 
subject  of  automobiles,  and  in  1889  he  began  to  man- 
ufacture, using  the  Daimler  motor.  His  first  atten- 
tion having  been  given  to  the  motor,  he  brought 
out  very  soon  his  famous  two-parallel  cylinder 
mounted  horizontally  on  the  body  frame.  Originally 
of  the  firm  of  Fils  de  Peugeot,  he  severed  his  con- 
nection with  that  firm,  and  in  1876  formed  the  So- 
ciety of  Artisans.  In  1898,  additional  factories  were 
erected  at  Fives-Lille,  and  now  the  concern  has 
works  also  at  Audincourt.  The  latter  wrorks  is 
claimed  to  be  the  most  extensive  automobile  manu- 
facturing establishment  in  the  world.  Peugeot  is  a 
member  of  many  learned  societies,  was  elected  an 
officer  of  the  Academic  in  1881,  and  a  Chevalier  of 
the  Legion  of  Honor  in  1889. 

RADCLIFFE  WARD 

Ward   commenced   his   experiments    in    England 
about  1886,  and  built  a  cab  in  1887,  which  he  ran  in 
Brighton  with  more  or  less  success.     A  second  vehi- 
cle, an  omnibus,  was  built  by  him  and  run  on  the 
1 68 


NOTED   INVESTIGATORS 

streets  in  London  in  1888,  and  actually  covered,  all 
told,  five  thousand  miles. 

MORS 

A  manufacturer  of  electrical  apparatus,  the  Mors 
establishment  made  a  steam  vehicle  in  1886,  and 
some  ten  years  later  began  to  manufacture  gasoline 
vehicles. 

MAGNUS  VOLK 

In  1887,  Volk  built  an  electrical  dog  cart  which, 
like  that  of  Ward,  was  seen  on  the  streets  of  Brigh- 
ton. The  next  year  he  associated  himself  with  Im- 
misch  &  Co.,  and  built  for  the  Sultan  of  Turkey  an 
electrical  dog  cart.  This  was  claimed  to  have  a 
radius  of  fifty  miles  at  ten  miles  an  hour,  with  seven 
hundred  pounds  of  battery  in  twenty-four  cells,  driv- 
ing the  vehicle  by  means  of  a  one  horse-power  motor. 

BUTLER 

About  the  same  time  that  Daimler  and  Benz  were 
at  work,  Butler,  an  Englishman,  was  studying  to 
make  a  hydro-carbon  engine.  He  had  drawings  in 
1884  and  got  out  a  patent  in  1887.  He  built  a  tri- 
cycle soon  after  that  date.  This  had  two  front 
wrheels  as  steering  wheels  and  a  rear  wheel  driven 
by  a  two-cylinder  engine.  But  Butler  did  not  carry 
his  plans  further,  for,  as  he  wrote  in  1890,  "the 
authorities  do  not  countenance  its  use  on  roads,  and 
I  have  abandoned  in  consequence  any  further  devel- 
opment of  it." 

LE  BLANT 

The  steam  carriage  that  Le  Blant,  of  France,  built 
carried  nine  passengers,  and  its  weight,    fuel    and 
169 


AUTOMOBILE  BIOGRAPHIES 

water  included,  was  three  and  one-half  tons.  The 
engine  was  three-cylinder  horizontal,  and  the  boiler, 
a  Serpollet  instantaneous  generator,  was  placed  be- 
hind the  carriage,  the  fireman  beside  it  and  the 
driver  in  front. 

EMILE  DELAHAYE 

Delahaye,  of  Tours,  associated  himself  with  the 
firm  of  Cail  in  1870,  spending  some  years  in  Bel- 
gium, but  in  1890  the  automobile  so  attracted  him  as 
to  lead  him  to  the  construction  of  his  first  vehicle. 
For  ten  years  he  practically  adhered  to  the  horizontal 
engine  under  the  seat,  which  construction  we  find 
him  using  in  1900.  It  is  worthy  of  note  that  to 
Delahaye  is  given  credit  for  the  practical  adaptation 
of  the  radiator  in  the  arrangement  now  generally 
used  in  the  cooling  system. 

ROGER 

Roger,  of  Paris,  was  the  French  licensee  for  Benz, 
taking  up  that  motor  much  in  the  same  manner  as 
Panhard  &  Levassor  took  up  the  Daimler.  In  fact 
he  had  such  close  relations  with  Benz  as  to  guide 
the  further  development  of  both.  To  this  extent  he 
was  doubtless  largely  responsible  for  converting 
Benz  to  the  four-cycle  instead  of  the  two>-cycle  con- 
struction, and  he  is  also  credited  with  having 
brought  about  the  change  from  the  vertical  crank 
shaft  to  the  horizontal  in  the  Benz  cars.  Making 
good  headway  in  1894,  he  had  produced  fifty  or 
more  machines  by  1895,  and  ran  one  in  the  Paris- 
Bordeaux  race  of  that  year.  He  brought  a  car  -to 
New  York  in  1896,  and  took  part  in  the  Cosmopol- 
itan race,  from  New  York  to  Ardsley  and  return. 
170 


:    NOTED  INVESTIGATORS 

.GEORGES  RICHARD 

In  1893,  Georges  Richard  began  cycle  manufactur- 
ing in  a  small  shop  and  two  years  later  turned  his 
business  into  a  limited  corporation.  In  1897,  he  be- 
gan the  manufacture  of  automobiles.  His  motor  is 
a  development  of  the  Benz,  with  ignition  improve- 
ment. 

POCHAIN 

Pochain,  in  France,  built  in  1893  a  six-seated 
phaeton  with  fifty-four  cells  of  battery,  which  would 
seem  to  have  been  practically  the  first  satisfactory 
vehicle  of  its  kind. 

Louis  KRIEGER 

Early  in  the  nineties  of  the  last  century  Krieger 
made  an  electric  vehicle.  About  1894,  he  introduced 
his  four-passenger  hack,  converted  by  substituting 
an  electric  fore  carriage  for  the  front  axle  of  an  ordi- 
nary vehicle.  He  has  since  developed  his  electric 
vehicles  in  the  class  of  city  carriages.  A  touring  car, 
built  for  England,  called  the  Powerful,  made  in  1901 
notable  records  in  that  country  in  a  long  tour  through 
the  Isles.  The  principal  work  of  Krieger,  however, 
has  been  in  the  development  of  front  drive  and  steer 
construction. 

DEDETRICH 

Baron  DeDetrich  is  of  the  well-known  house  that 
claims  to  have  been  founded  more  than  one  hundred 
years  ago  in  Luneville,  Alsace,  and  has  grown  to  be 
one  of  the  greatest  works  for  the  manufacture  of 
locomotives  and  other  machinery.  In  1880  the  con- 


AUTOMOBILE  BIOGRAPHIES 

cern  is  said  to  have  employed  four  thousand  men. 
Its  connection  with  the  automobile  industry  began 
practically  in  1895,  when  the  construction  of  auto- 
mobiles on  the  system  of  Amedee  Bollee  &  Sons  was 
undertaken.  With  large  resources  and  ability  de- 
velopment was  naturally  rapid,  resulting  in  the  pro- 
duction to-day  of  one  of  the  first-class  French  makes. 

DAVID  SALOMONS 

Sir  David  Salomons,  Bart.,  was  born  in  England, 
in  1851.  He  was  educated  for  a  short  period  at 
University  College,  London,  and  afterwards  at  Caius 
College,  Cambridge,  where  he  was  graduated  with 
natural  science  honors.  He  is  a  member  of  the  In- 
stitution of  Electrical  Engineers,  where  he  took  lead- 
ing part  for  many  years  on  the  Council,  and  served 
in  the  positions  of  honorary  treasurer  and  vice-presi- 
dent. He  is  a  fellow  of  the  Royal  Astronomical  So- 
ciety, of  the  Physical  Society  of  London,  and  of  the 
Royal  Microscopical  Society,  and  an  associate  of  the 
Institution  of  Civil  Engineers. 

Sir  David  was  one  of  the  first  in  England  to  adopt 
the  electric  light.  This  was  about  the  year  1874, 
when  he  found  it  necessary  to  make  the  lamps, 
switches  and  other  apparatus  himself,  as  those  were 
unobtainable  at  the  time;  much  of  the  apparatus  in 
general  use  to-day  has  been  copied  from  his  models. 
About  1874-5,  he  constructed  a  small  electrical  road 
carriage,  which  was  in  use  a  short  time  only,  owing 
to  the  trouble  of  re-charging  batteries,  as  no  ac- 
cumulators existed  at  that  period.  Devoting  him- 
self largely  to  scientific  investigation  he  is  the  author 
of  various  works  on  scientific  subjects,  such  as  pho- 
172 


SIR  DAVID  SALOMONS 


NOTED   INVESTIGATORS 

tographic  optical  formula^  photography  and  elec- 
trical subjects,  his  chief  work  being  his  three- volume 
Electric  Light  Installations,  now  entering  its  ninth 
edition.  Of  this  work,  the  first  volume  on  Accumu- 
lators was  for  a  great  many  years  the  only  practical 
work  on  the  subject.  He  is  also  the  author  of  many 
papers  read  before  scientific  societies,  including  the 
Royal  Society  and  Royal  Institution.  He  is  an  orig- 
inal member  of  the  Automobile  Club  of  France  and 
of  the  Automobile  Club  of  Great  Britain,  being  a 
member  of  the  committee  of  the  former  and  member 
of  committee  and  a  vice-president  of  the  latter,  and  is 
also  an  ordinary  or  honorary  member  of  most  of  the 
Continental  automobile  clubs.  He  was  Mayor  of 
Tunbridge  Wells,  1894-5,  and  High  Sheriff  of  Kent 
in  1 88 1,  and  is  a  Magistrate  for  Kent,  Sussex,  Mid- 
dlesex, Westminster  and  London. 

The  connection  of  Sir  David  Salomons  with  the 
encouragement  and  development  of  self-propelled 
traffic  in  the  United  Kingdom,  constitutes  one  of  the 
most  important  chapters  in  the  contemporaneous  his- 
tory of  the  automobile.  His  first  step  to  secure  a 
favorable  public  opinion  for  the  legislative  measures 
that  he  proposed  was  to  have  an  exhibition  of  vehi- 
cles, which  took  place  at  Tunbridge  Wells,  in  Octo- 
ber, 1895.  As  a  result  of  this  exhibition  and  a 
voluminous  correspondence  thereafter,  the  news- 
papers of  Great  Britain  and  many  of  the  members  of 
the  Houses  of  Lords  and  Commons  were  brought  to 
see  the  justice  of  the  measures  asked  for.  Next,  the 
Self-Propelled  Traffic  Association  was  organized. 
Sir  David  Salomons  was  elected  president  and  the 
campaign  for  Parliamentary  action  was  inaugurated 
173 


AUTOMOBILE  BIOGRAPHIES 

and  brilliantly  and  energetically  prosecuted.  When 
the  bill  came  before  the  Commons  and  the  Lords  it 
was  substantially  supported,  but  its  provisions  re- 
ceived a  great  deal  of  discussion.  Some  amend- 
ments, particularly  relating  to  the  questions  of  smoke 
and  petroleum  use,  were  attached  to  it.  In  the  end, 
however,  the  act  that  was  passed  was  generally  satis- 
factory to  all  interested  in  the  promotion  and  pro- 
tection of  self-propelled  traffic.  It  has  been  said  that 
"there  has  hardly  been  an  act  passed  containing  more 
liberal  clauses  and  with  more  unity  of  action."  Its 
provisions  allow  of  reasonable  travel  of  all  kinds  of 
self-propelled  vehicles  throughout  the  Kingdom  and 
the  act  as  a  whole  is  regarded  as  one  of  the  most 
notable  advances  made  in  this  matter  during  the 
present  generation. 

LEON  BOLLEE 

A  brother  of  Amedee  Bollee,  Leon  Bollee  has 
been  long  interested  in  the  business  that  bears  the 
family  name.  In  1896,  he  brought  out  a  motor 
cycle  that  was  a  type  between  a  cycle  and  a  vehicle. 
It  had  two  front  steering  wheels  and  one  front 
driver.  The  same  type  of  vehicle  has  been  adopted 
for  light  work,  such  as  parcel  delivery. 

JOSEPH  GUEDON 

Guedon  made  his  appearance  at  Bordeaux,  in 
October,  1897,  with  a  four-wheeled  wagonette,  which 
he  made  under  the  name  of  the  Decauville.  His  spe- 
cial construction  was  claimed  to  very  largely  elim- 
inate the  vibration  of  the  vehicle,  and  his  success  can 
be  fairly  judged  from  the  results  in  the  past  few 
174 


A.  DARRACQ 


NOTED   INVESTIGATORS 

years.  The  Decauville  cars  have  been  developed  and 
refined  to  such  a  point  as  to  be  among  the  best  of  the 
French  makes,  and  now  have  an  international  repu- 
tation. 

RENE  DE  KNYFF 

De  Knyff  became  an  enthusiastic  automobilist,  and 
with  other  gentlemen,  sportsmen  of  the  nobility,  be- 
came a  great  amateur.  He  was  and  is  still  known  as 
the  King  of  Chauffeurs,  having  won  several  of  the 
most  important  races,  driving  the  Panhard  cars  to 
victory. 

ADOLF  CLEMENT 

Born  in  1855. 

Entirely  a  self-made  man,  Clement  had  experience 
as  a  locksmith  and  served  an  apprenticeship  as  a  tin- 
smith. He  started  and  built  up  a  bicycle  manufactur- 
ing establishment  which,  in  1894,  was  considered 
one  of  the  finest  in  France.  In  time  this  developed 
into  the  finest  cycle  manufactory  in  that  country.  It 
is  situated  in  Levallois,  near  Paris.  In  1899,  Clem- 
ent contracted  with  Panhard  &  Levassor  to'  manu- 
facture under  their  patents,  and  in  1900  he  made  a 
most  successful  light  vehicle  of  four  horse-power. 
Since  then  he  has  developed  his  automobile  factory, 
and  in  the  past  few  years  has  produced  competitors 
for  honors  in  the  first  class,  which  are  known  at  home 
and  abroad  as  the  Bayard  or  Clement-Bayard  cars. 

A.  DARRACQ 

About  fifty  years  of  age,  Darracq  has  had  an  ener- 
getic and  successful  career.  He  is  now  president  o<f 
the  Society  of  Engineers,  Paris,  and  a  member  of 


AUTOMOBILE  BIOGRAPHIES 

the  Legion  of  Honor.  He  is  best  known  as  an  in- 
ventor in  connection  with  the  automobile  industry. 
Among  his  inventions  are  a  shaft  drive  and  a  beveled 
gear  drive  which  are  now  universally  used.  He  orig- 
inated the  idea  o>f  placing  the  operating  lever  on  the 
steering  post  and  made  the  first  moderate  priced 
automobile  in  France.  He  is  now  the  engineer  and 
manager  of  one  of  the  biggest  factories  in  the  world. 

JAMES  GORDON  BENNETT 

So  interesting  was  the  sporting  side  of  the  auto- 
mobile movement  that  it  early  attracted  the  attention 
of  James  Gordon  Bennett.  The  great  runs,  or  tours, 
or  races  commenced  in  1891,  and  continued  annually 
from  1894  on,  resulted  in  the  offering  of  the  Bennett 
trophy  for  international  competition  under  condi- 
tions which  may  have  been  suggested  by  the  Amer- 
ica yacht  cup  races.  In  January,  1900,  this  was  an- 
nounced in  Paris,  and  the  custody  of  the  trophy  ini- 
tially given  to  the  Automobile  Club  of  France  as  the 
first  and  foremost  champions  of  automobiling.  Elab- 
orate and  excellent  rules  govern  the  annual  competi- 
tion for  the  trophy,  and  the  races  are  held  in  the 
country  whose  representative  has  won  in  the  previous 
year.  In  this  way  the  first  race  was  in  France,  as 
well  as  the  second,  and  the  1903  race  in  Ireland, 
while  that  of  1904  was  held  in  Germany,  but  was 
won  by  a  Frenchman,  so  that  the  1905  race  will 
again  be  held  in  the  land  of  the  original  custodians 
of  the  trophy. 


176 


INDEX 


INDEX 


PAGE 

Adamson,   Daniel 158 

Anderson,  James  Caleb 145 

Andrews,  F 137 

Armstrong 163 

Automobile,     Origin    and    De- 
velopment of  the 11 

Battin 155 

Baynes,  John 129 

Bennett,  James  Gordon 176 

Benz,  Carl 94 

Bernhard,  Anthony 154 

Blanchard 121 

Blanchard,    Thomas 68 

Bollee,  Amedee 90 

Bollee,  Leon 174 

Sordino,    Chevalier 139 

Boulton,  Isaac  W 163 

Bouton,    G 166 

Brown,  Samuel 133 

Brunton,    William 127 

Burtsall,   T 132 

Butler 169 

Carrett,  W.  0 159 

Cartwright,    Edmund 131 

Church,  W.  H 87 

Clement,   Adolf 175 

Clive 139 

Copeland 166 

Cowan,  T.  W 162 

Cugnot,  Nicholas  Joseph 31 

Daimler,  Gottlieb 95 

Dallery,   Thomas   Charles  Au- 

guste    122 

Dance,   Charles 142 

Darracq,   A 175 

Darwin,    Erasmus 118 

Davidson,  Robert .148 


PAGE 

Decauville   174 

De   Detrich 171 

De  Dion,  Count  A 167 

De  Knyff,  Rene 175 

Delahaye,    Emile 170 

Dietz    144 

Dudgeon,  Richard 155 

Dumbell,    John 126 

Du  Quet 126 

Edgeworth,  Richard  Lovell...  120 

Evans,  Oliver 38- 

Parfleur,    Stephen 112: 

Field,  Joshua 143- 

Fisher,  J.  K 153 

Foreword  5 

Fourness,    Robert 123 

Genevois,  J.  H 126 

Gibbs  141 

Goodman  153 

Gordon,  David 5ft 

Griffiths,  Julius 130 

Guedon,  Joseph 174 

Gurney,  Goldsworthy 64 

Hancock,  Walter 71 

Harland 137 

Hautsch,  Johann Ill 

Hayball,  Charles  T 162 

Heaton,  W.  G 148: 

Hill,  F 150 

Holland,  T.  S 135 

Huygens,  Christiaan Ill 

Inventors,    Pioneer 29 

Investigators,  Noted 105 


James,  William  Henry 59 

James,  William  T 71 


179 


INDEX 


PAGE 

Jeanteaud,  Charles 165 

Johnson 70 

Kestler,   J.   S 121 

Krieger,   Louis 171 

Knyff,  Rene  de 175 

Le    Blant 169 

Leibnitz,     Gottfried     Wilhelm 

von 115 

Lenoir,  Jean  Joseph  Etienne..     89 

Levassor 99 

Lough  and  Messenger 155 

Maceroni,  Francis 78 

Mackworth,  Humphrey 115 

Marcus,  Siegfried 93 

Masurier    121 

Medhurst,   George 124 

Messenger   155 

Millichap,  G 144 

Moore,  Francis 120 

Mors 169 

Murdock,   William 34 

Nasmyth,  James 135 

Neville,   James 134 

Newton,  Isaac 113 

Norrgber    153 

Noted  Investigators 105 

Ogle,   Summers  and 140 

Origin  and  Development  of  the 
Automobile  11 

Papin,  Denis 116 

Parker,  T.  W 133 

Pecqueur    138 

Peugeot,    Armand 168 

Pioneer  Inventors 29 

Planta   121 

Pochain  171 

Pocock,  George 133 

Pyott,  L.  T 164 


PAGE 

Raffard   165 

Ramsey,   David HO 

Ravel,  Pierre 164 

Read,    Nathan 48 

Renault,   Louis 101 

Renault,    Marcel 101 

Richard,  Elie 114 

Richard,  Georges 171 

Richter,  A 164 

Rickett,    Thomas 156 

Roberts,  Richard 82 

Robinson 118 

Roger  170 

Roper,  Sylvester  Haywood 165 

Russell,  John  Scott 83 

Salomons,    Sir   David 172 

Selden,  George  B 91 

Serpollet,  Leon 100 

Stirling 159 

Stevin,  Simon 109 

Summers  and  Ogle 140 

Symington,  William 45 

Tangye,  Richard 161 

Tindall,  Thomas 129 

Thompson,  R.  W 154 

Trevithick,  Richard 50 

Vaucauson     117 

Vegelius   114 

Verbiest,    Fernando 112 

Viney,  James 138 

Vivian,    Andrew 125 

Volk,  Magnus 169 

Von   Leibnitz,    Gottfried   Wil- 
helm      115 

Ward,    Radcliffe 168 

Watt,  James 122 

Wildgosse,  Thomas 110 

Yates   .                                            .  144 


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